Israel Rejects UN Ceasefire to Allow Polio Vaccinations in Gaza

Julian Borger at The Guardian reports that the first verified case of type 2 poliovirus in 25 years in Gaza, in a baby, has resulted in the paralysis of the infant. It is only the first of many if the United Nations is not allowed to administer vaccines to 650,000 children in the Strip, which will definitely require a ceasefire. Israeli authorities are refusing to consider this step.

There is no cure for polio once it is contracted. Its victims can be paralyzed or can die.

Without a ceasefire, UNICEF says, families will not line up their children to receive the vaccine by mouth. Some 95% of the infants in Gaza need to have the vaccine administered to prevent an outbreak, and they need two doses. Without a ceasefire, aid workers cannot even safely move around to make arrangements for administering the doses. The aid organizations want to use Deir al-Balah to store and distribute the vaccines, but the Israeli army has ordered everyone out of there and has invaded, risking destroying the remaining medical infrastructure there. Some 250,000 Palestinians have been expelled from their shelters since the beginning of August.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, warned, “Delaying a humanitarian pause will increase the risk of spread among children.” He suggested that some Israeli children could suffer from an epidemic as well, but Israeli children have largely been vaccinated continually. Palestinian children had also been almost entirely vaccinated up until the Israeli total war on Gaza was implemented last fall.

In covering the war in Ukraine, UNICEF reported, “UNICEF helps vaccinate over 400 million children globally against polio every year, to eradicate polio worldwide. In Ukraine, UNICEF works to secure uninterrupted availability of life-saving vaccines for children and adults and to maintain high routine immunization coverage. As the war and subsequent displacement continues, gaps in immunization coverage put children’s health at risk.”

Although children in Ukraine are also at risk from polio outbreaks, the human toll of that war pales in comparison to Gaza. Some 2,000 children have been killed as a result of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on the Gaza population has killed more than 15,000 children.

Whereas Putin’s Russia has been massively sanctioned for its illegal occupation and warfare in Ukraine by the United States and most NATO countries, Israel’s government, which illegally occupied Gaza in 1967 and which has shown a reckless disregard for civilian life that may amount to genocide, has been given tens of billions of dollars by the Biden administration.

Type 2 polio vaccinations are substantially down over the past 10 months, since the population and the aid workers have been constantly expelled from a succession of supposed safe zones by the Israeli military, medical facilities have been destroyed, and medicine deliveries have been made difficult or impossible by the bombings, artillery barrages, machine gun fire, drone strikes, lack of fuel and general chaos inflicted on the population by monstrously permissive Israeli rules of engagement — which disregard the value of civilian life.

Although Israeli authorities are allowing the delivery of the refrigerated trucks necessary for the vaccines, as well as the vaccine doses themselves, through the Kerem Shalom crossing, the aid workers are pointing out that these steps do no good unless there is a ceasefire that allows the aid workers to move around and give the vaccines to the children. The Guardian quotes Lazzarini as saying, “It is not enough to bring the vaccines into Gaza and protect the cold chain. To have an impact, the vaccines must end up in the mouths of every child under the age of 10.”

“The world has made tremendous progress against polio in the past three decades, vaccinating over 2.5 billion children and reducing cases by 99 percent,” the UNICEF story about Ukraine said. “But this progress is fragile, and we cannot afford to lose focus. Millions of children are still missing out on routine vaccinations because of pandemic disruptions, conflict, climate disasters and displacement.”

“Infectious diseases do not disappear during the war,” Yuliia Dovjanych, head doctor at the Dbayu medical center in Ukraine told UNICEF. “The fight against them is our ‘medical front’ where we must remain resilient. Therefore, we must continue to get vaccinated, take care of our health and the health of our children!”

Some 11,520 civilians have been killed in the Ukraine war, whereas over 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza, a majority of them women and children.

At the medical front in Gaza, the war to save the children is going very badly. It will be lost without a ceasefire.