On Thursday 29 August, the European Union called for immediate humanitarian pauses in Gaza to enable more than 640,000 children to be vaccinated against polio. After 25 years, the first case of the polio virus was detected in July.
“The EU welcomes the delivery of more than 1.2 million oral polio vaccines as well as the cooperation by Israel in delivering the vaccines to Gaza, and underlines the importance of further cooperation by all sides with WHO, UNRWA and UNICEF to conduct the vaccination rollout”, said the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, on Thursday.
On Thursday, UNRWA’s deputy field director, Sam Rose, posted on the X social network that a major vaccination campaign was due to be launched on Saturday 31 August.
The EU has stressed the need to protect health infrastructures and ensure safe access to vaccination sites. “An epidemic among a population already weakened by over 10 months of fighting and displacement, malnourishment, lack of basic health services, and deplorable sanitary conditions, as well as further spread internationally, must be avoided”, said Mr Borrell.
On Thursday, several European foreign ministers, meeting at an informal Council in Brussels (see other news), once again reaffirmed the urgent need for a ceasefire.
“The vaccine doses are ready. Not only must they enter Gaza now, but they must of course be inoculated”, declared the German minister, Annalena Baerbock.
The UN coordinator for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, who was invited to present the latest UN observations from the field, spoke of a “humanitarian” tragedy of “unprecedented proportions”.
“If we look at the absence of water, the difficulty to obtain food, to nourish one’s child, and the majority of people living in tent and having often been displaced multiple times over the same period (…) we need a massive scale up of humanitarian assistance”, concluded Ms Kaag. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)