#preventable illnesses

Unicef and the World Health Organization (WHO) are calling for a humanitarian pause for seven days in Gaza to launch two rounds of a polio vaccination campaign at the end of August in the beseiged strip.

In a statement issued by Unicef, the pauses "would allow children and families to safely reach health facilities and community outreach workers to get to children who cannot access health facilities for polio vaccination".

It adds that the campaign will not be possible without the humanitarian pauses. In coordination with the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the UN entities have previously provided two drops of novel oral polio vaccine type 2 to more than 640,000 children under the age of 10.

Since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in October, there have been repeated warnings about the possible outbreak of viral epidemics as a result of the destruction of health, water and sewage infrastructure.

In July, the WHO warned of the spread of polio, a highly infectious disease that can cause paralysis of the limbs, across the Gaza Strip and possibly further afield as a result of collapsing sanitation in the Palestinian enclave.

Israel also began offering polio vaccinations to its troops fighting in Gaza after remnants of the virus were found in test samples from the region. Ayadil Saparbekov, WHO team lead for health emergencies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, said at the time that circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 had been isolated from environmental samples from sewage.

"There is a high risk of spreading of the circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus in Gaza, not only because of the detection but because of the very dire situation with the water sanitation," he told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.