The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday that it plans to vaccinate more than 40,000 children in Gaza against several diseases, taking advantage of the current ceasefire.
So far, the WHO and its partners have immunized over 10,000 children under the age of three during the first eight days of the campaign, which began on November 9.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that phase one of the vaccination programme has been extended until Saturday. The goal is to protect children from measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, polio, rotavirus and pneumonia.
Phases two and three—carried out with UNICEF, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), and Gaza’s health ministry under Hamas administration—are scheduled for December and January.
Tedros said he was “encouraged that the ceasefire is holding,” explaining that this pause in fighting has allowed WHO and its partners to scale up essential health services and support the re-equipment and rebuilding of Gaza’s heavily damaged health system.
The UN Security Council on Monday approved a plan developed by U.S. President Donald Trump that led to the implementation of the October 10 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
However, the truce has been punctuated by several incidents of violence in the territory, which has been devastated by more than two years of conflict that followed Hamas’s deadly attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.
That attack killed 1,221 people in Israel—most of them civilians—according to an AFP compilation of official figures.
In response, Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 69,500 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The ministry, whose statistics are regarded as credible by the UN, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but reports that more than half of those killed are women and children.
