UN Health News

Around 560,000 children under ten have been successfully vaccinated against polio during the first round of an emergency campaign in the Gaza Strip, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Friday.

Six staff members with the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, were killed in Gaza on Wednesday when two Israeli airstrikes hit a school-turned-shelter and its surroundings.

The UN Middle East envoy has strongly condemned deadly airstrikes by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday on a densely populated area in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in Gaza.

Monday would have marked the start of the new school year in Gaza, but the ongoing war continues to deprive hundreds of thousands of children of this fundamental right, UN agencies have warned.

More than 160,000 children were vaccinated in southern Gaza on Thursday, the first day of a polio vaccination campaign there, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said on Friday.

The second phase of a two-round campaign to vaccinate over half a million young children in Gaza against polio began in Khan Younis on Thursday, the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said in a post on the social media platform X

In Gaza, despite the success of the mass polio vaccination campaign so far, UN humanitarians warned on Wednesday that the very children they are trying to protect have been blighted by disease and heavily traumatized by ongoing fighting.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that 161,030 children under 10 have been vaccinated in central Gaza during the first two days of the UN-led mass vaccination campaign, surpassing the initial target of 156,000. The figure amounts

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Friday for warring parties in Gaza to lay down their arms so that humanitarians can safely vaccinate more than half a million children against polio. 

The risk of polio spreading in Gaza remains high unless there is an urgent and comprehensive response to the serious health threat, UN humanitarians said on Wednesday.