World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the ongoing polio vaccination campaign in Gaza as a “massive success” on Friday, after half a million children in the territory received a first dose, despite the war.
As Breitbart News reported earlier this month, the Israeli government, together with international health agencies, launched a massive polio vaccination drive to save the children of Gaza from death or disability.
The Agence France-Presse (via Times of Israel) noted:
The World Health Organization chief hails the success of the first phase of a giant polio vaccination campaign in war-ravaged Gaza after more than 560,000 children received a first dose.
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After the first confirmed polio case in 25 years, a massive vaccination effort began on September 1 targeting at least 90 percent of children under 10, aided by localized “humanitarian pauses” in fighting.
…The first phase of the campaign, which first brought vaccines to children in central Gaza, then the south, and finally to the hardest-to-reach north of the territory, wrapped up Thursday.
The vaccination drive will continue in four weeks, as children will need a second dose of the vaccine for full immunity.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) discovered polio in water supplies in Gaza in July. Soldiers were offered vaccines on a voluntary basis. The scale and intensity of the vaccination campaign, which took place despite the lack of a formal ceasefire, also runs against charges by Israel’s enemies that it is seeking “genocide” in its war effort against Hamas.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.