640,000 kids, 1.3M doses

Polio vaccine campaign starts in Gaza, as fighting is expected to pause

- JULIA FRANKEL

On Saturday, Gaza's Health Ministry announced a soft start to the vaccination campaign, with a small number of children receiving doses in the southern city of Khan Younis. The campaign comes after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years.

The UN health agency and partners are launching a campaign starting Sunday to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children in Gaza against polio, an ambitious effort amid a devastating war that has destroyed the territory’s health care system.

The campaign comes after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization says the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.

The vaccination effort will not be easy: Gaza’s roads are largely destroyed, its hospitals badly damaged and its population spread into isolated pockets.