WHO aims to vaccinate 40,000 children in Gaza Strip

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that it aims to vaccinate more than 40,000 children against various diseases in Gaza, as it takes advantage of the recent ceasefire.

The WHO and its partners already vaccinated over 10,000 children under the age of three in the first eight days of an initial phase of the campaign launched on November 9.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said phase one of the programme has been extended until Saturday and hopes to protect children against measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, polio, rotavirus and pneumonia.

Phases two and three of the campaign, which is being conducted in collaboration with UNICEF, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and the health ministry in Gaza under Hamas control, are planned for December and January.

The WHO chief said he was "encouraged to see that the ceasefire continues to hold, as it allows the WHO and its partners to intensify essential health services across Gaza and support the necessary re-equipment and reconstruction of its devastated health system".

The UN Security Council voted on Monday to endorse the plan of US President Donald Trump, which facilitated the establishment of a ceasefire on October 10 between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The truce has already been marked by several outbreaks of violence in the Palestinian territory, devastated by over two years of hostilities triggered by the bloody attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count of official data.

More than 69,500 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military's retaliatory campaign, according to Gaza's health ministry.

The ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN, does not specify the number of combatants killed but indicates that more than half of the deaths are minors and women.

Agence France-Presse