Polio vaccine drive begins in Gaza

Palestinian health authorities and United Nations agencies started distributing polio vaccines to children in Gaza over the weekend, the territory’s Health Ministry announced Saturday.

The polio vaccination campaign seeks to vaccinate the estimated 640,000 children in the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced last week. Each child will get two drops of the vaccine in two rounds, and the second round will be administered four weeks following the first one, the health agency said.

The effort kicked off in central Gaza with a “humanitarian pause” beginning at 6 a.m. Sunday. It will run until 3 p.m. for three days, per the WHO. The initiative is expected to also take place in the southern and northern parts of the strip, in coordination with Israeli authorities.

The campaign comes weeks after Palestinian health officials announced the first case of polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old child in the city of Deir al-Balah. The case marked the first in years for Gaza, which has faced a humanitarian crisis for months amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Polio is commonly spread through contaminated water, with the potential to cause paralysis and death.

To stop the transmission of the virus in Gaza, health workers need to vaccinate at least 90 percent of the children there, according to the WHO. More than 2,100 workers will be helping the effort.

The news comes as Israel’s military said it recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who became a well-known captive as his parents publicly urged for his release during the months-long war.

The Israeli military said Sunday the six hostages were killed by Hamas shortly before forces reached them in an underground tunnel in Rafah.

The recovery of the six bodies prompted further calls for a cease-fire and hostage release deal to end the 10-month-old war as negotiations drag on between Israel, Hamas and international mediators.

The war has raged on for more than ten months since Hamas launched a surprise assault in southern Gaza that more than 1,100 people dead. An estimated 250 others were taken hostage, about 100 of which were released during a week-long pause in fighting late last year.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since early October as its forces seek to eliminate the threat of the militant group, according to local health officials.