PALESTENIAN TERRITORIES: A polio vaccination campaign began on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has announced "humanitarian pauses" to allow large-scale inoculation, a health official told AFP.
The campaign was announced after Gaza recorded its first polio case last month.
The campaign began 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.
Infant babies to 10 years arrived at the centres to receive the dose as drones flew overhead, said Yasser Shaabane, medical director of Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday said that Israel had agreed to a series of three-day "humanitarian pauses" in northern, southern and central areas to facilitate vaccinations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however has insisted that these pauses were not amounting to any kind of ceasefire in overall fighting in Gaza.
The campaign aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the besieged Palestinian territory, devastated by almost 11 months of war.
The campaign also aims to administer the first dose of two drops to at least 90 per cent of the children in Gaza territory.
Polio, which had been eradicated in Gaza for 25 years, reappeared amid the hostilities that began on October 7 after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza has identified 67 vaccination centres mostly hospitals, smaller health centres and schools in central Gaza, 59 in southern Gaza and 33 in northern Gaza to administer the doses.
The second dose of the vaccine must be given four weeks after the first.