Palestinians in Gaza waited to see on Thursday whether there would be a lull in the fighting to allow the start of a polio vaccination campaign, as conflict raged in the besieged enclave, killing at least 34 people.
The United Nations is preparing to vaccinate some 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organization confirmed on August 23 that at least one child was paralyzed by type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in Gaza in 25 years.
The United Nations, which this month called for a humanitarian truce, hopes to begin its vaccination campaign on Sept. 1, said Juliette Touma, director of communications for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
The World Health Organization said the baby was named Abdul-Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan. He will turn one on September 1.
His mother, Nivine Abu Al-Jidyan, said she feared for her son after health officials told her there was little they could do to help him.
“I was shocked that my son contracted this disease in the midst of war and closed border crossings. In these conditions and with the lack of medicine… will it continue like this?” Abu Al-Jidyan told Reuters on Friday. Thursday.
“He is my only child. It is his right to travel and be cared for; it is his right to walk, run and move as before. It is unfair that he is left in the tent without care or attention,” she said from a tent in Deir Al-Balah, in the central region of the Gaza Strip.
At Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, Umm Eliane Bakr fears that her 19-month-old daughter is vulnerable to polio because of poor health caused by malnutrition.
She hopes her child will be vaccinated soon, but said she is concerned about the safety of traveling in an area where there have been repeated Israeli attacks.
“I can’t walk down the street and be bombed, or something happens to my daughter, or be the target of an attack. I need a truce, a ceasefire so I can give my daughter this injection (vaccine),” she told Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week denied media reports that Israel was preparing for a broad humanitarian truce, saying a more limited plan had been put forward.
“These are not pauses in the fight to administer polio vaccines, but simply the allocation of some places in the Gaza Strip,” he said in a statement.
Senior Hamas official Izzat El-Reshiq reiterated the group’s support for the United Nations and international organizations’ initiative for an urgent humanitarian truce across the enclave to allow for the polio vaccination campaign.
He described Netanyahu’s statement as an attempt to hinder the process by rejecting the UN appeal.
Israeli forces continued to shell areas of the Gaza Strip on Thursday in their battle against Hamas-led militants. Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes have so far killed at least 34 people.
Source: Terra
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