UN upholds safety and efficacy of Gaza polio vaccine

Dire conditions brought on by the war have caused the disease to resurface after more than two decades.  Last week, a case was confirmed in a 10-month-old.

Countering vaccine misinformation 

During his daily media briefing from New York on Tuesday, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric noted that there had been misinformation surrounding the vaccine.

“I want to make the following clear: the safest and most effective way to protect children against the polio virus, regardless of the variant, is to vaccinate them,” he said. 

Several news stories have appeared online in Israel and the United States, quoting two Israeli scientists falsely asserting that the polio vaccine due to be used in Gaza is “experimental” and a danger to citizens in both Palestine and Israel. 

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, are preparing to launch the campaign, which will be conducted in two rounds. 

More than 640,000 children under the age of 10 will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine type 2. 

“This vaccine is safe, it is effective, and it offers top quality protection,” said Mr. Dujarric. “It is a vaccine globally recommended for variant type two polio virus outbreaks by the World Health Organization.” 

He said the vaccine was rolled out in March 2021, and since then more than 1.2 billion doses have been used to protect children in over 40 countries. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently appealed for a humanitarian pause to allow for the extensive vaccination campaign. 

Gaza had a high level of vaccination coverage prior to the escalation of hostilities last October but routine immunization coverage has dropped, increasing the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases to children, including polio.   

Israeli evacuation orders latest threat to Gaza aid workers  

Meanwhile, evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military have impacted the safety of humanitarians delivering aid in the Gaza Strip, the head of the UN’s Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) said on Tuesday. 

“Mass evacuation orders are the latest in a long list of unbearable threats to UN and humanitarian personnel,” Under-Secretary-General Gilles Michaud said in a statement. 

Mr. Michaud underlined the UN’s determination to stay in Gaza, where life-saving aid continues to be distributed, which he called “a tremendous feat given that we are operating at the upper-most peripheries of tolerable risk.” 

Running out of safe spaces 

He said this past weekend, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) gave the UN just a few hours’ notice to move more than 200 personnel out of their offices and living spaces in Deir Al-Balah, a crucial humanitarian hub. 

“Like most Palestinians in Gaza, we are running out of safe spaces for our own staff,” he said. 

Furthermore, “the timing could hardly be worse,” he added, as UN agencies are set to begin the massive polio vaccination campaign next week, which requires large numbers of staff to enter the enclave. 

Caught in the crosshairs 

“However, the IDF’s actions this weekend compound existing security threats and seriously impact the pace at which we can deliver, safely.  These constraints are beyond our control,” he continued. 

Mr. Michaud said “humanitarians have been in the crosshairs” throughout the Gaza crisis – by far the deadliest on record for the UN. 

“In line with international humanitarian law, our ability to provide assistance rests on the responsibility by parties to conflicts to do everything in their power to keep our colleagues safe,” he said. 

Stressing that “the women and men who risk their lives to deliver humanitarian aid need a safe and consistent place from which to work,” he called for all parties “to respect international law and their commitments under the UN Charter to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and premises.”