We can’t vaccinate children while bombs are falling, says UN aid agency

UN Interviews

Despite deadly new devastating strikes on public shelters in Gaza, UN aid teams confirmed that the second and final round of a mass polio vaccination campaign got off to a successful start on Monday.

Just hours into the operation, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said that thousands of children under 10 in the centre of the enclave had already been given another dose of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2); the first oral shot was administered last month.

The success of the campaign is bittersweet, though, after an UNRWA school in Nuseirat that was due to be used as a vaccination base was hit by a deadly strike on Sunday night that left 22 dead.

Elsewhere, a pre-dawn strike at Al Aqsa hospital courtyard in Deir Al Balah set tented shelters ablaze and rescue workers searching for survivors among charred and mangled metal frames, as UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge explains to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.