Israel has agreed to limited daily pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for a polio vaccination campaign, the United Nations said on Thursday.
Fighting is to cease in three areas of the Palestinian territory from morning to afternoon on three consecutive days, according to Rip Peeperkorn, a representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO), citing a commitment made by the Israeli authority responsible for Palestinian affairs, COGAT.
Peeperkorn said the polio vaccination campaign would be launched on September 1 in central Gaza, and carried out the two following days in southern and northern Gaza.
The daily pauses in fighting to facilitate the vaccination of more than 600,000 children would start at 6 am and end between 2 and 3 pm, he added.
Following the discovery of polio viruses in waste water in Gaza, vaccines against the disease were brought into the coastal area last week as it endures an ongoing Israeli siege.
The United Nations is looking to immunize more than 600,000 children in the Gaza Strip against the virus in two rounds of vaccinations.
In order for the doses to be administered, UN representatives had called for temporary ceasefire in the Gaza war that began almost 11 months ago.
Since the beginning of the war triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, many babies in the Gaza Strip have not been vaccinated.
The terrible hygienic conditions in the coastal strip, where numerous internally displaced people have to survive in very confined spaces and clean water is scarce, could contribute to the rapid spread of the disease.
