Gaza - Saba:
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned of the consequences if more than 119,000 children in northern Gaza do not receive the second dose of the polio vaccine before mid-November.
"If we miss this deadline, the immunity of children who received the first dose will decline rapidly," UNICEF Communication Specialist Rosalia Bollen said in Gaza today.
The three UN agencies involved in the vaccination campaign - the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and UNICEF - along with the Palestinian Ministry of Health, have been forced to delay the start of the third and final phase of the second round of the polio vaccination campaign in the north.
Bollen added: Due to the escalating bombardment, health workers are exhausted. Hundreds of people have been killed over the past weeks. Many more have been injured. There are hospitals that have been raided and besieged. So the conditions are not conducive to start this phase of the second round of the vaccination campaign in Gaza.
The first round of vaccination between September 1 and 12 succeeded in vaccinating 559,161 children, or an estimated 95 percent of the children targeted by the campaign. The second round began in central and southern Gaza on October 14, but was unable to reach children in northern Gaza.
She warned that some 120,000 children in Gaza are at "high risk". She further said that this poses a risk not only to those children ten years old and younger, "but also to children in the wider region."
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