Health workers on Sunday were set to begin a polio vaccination drive in Gaza aimed at preventing an outbreak of the quick-spreading disease — a daunting challenge in a besieged enclave shattered by 10 months of war and dependent on commitments by the war’s combatants, Israel and Hamas, to abide by pledged “humanitarian pauses.”
A campaign to inoculate children in Gaza against polio and prevent the spread of the virus began on Saturday as Palestinians there and in the occupied West Bank reeled from Israel’s ongoing campaigns in both regions
The vaccination drive was announced after Gaza recorded its first polio case in a quarter of a century earlier this month.
It officially began on Sunday in three health centres in central Gaza, a day after an unspecified number of children were vaccinated in the southern area of the Gaza Strip.