A fresh window of hope opened for families in Gaza as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced plans to immunize more than 40,000 children against multiple life-threatening diseases, taking advantage of the recently sustained ceasefire.
Over the first eight days of the campaign, which began on November 9, WHO and its partners managed to vaccinate over 10,000 children under the age of three.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed that the initial phase has now been extended until Saturday, aiming to shield children from measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, polio, rotavirus, and pneumonia.
The next stages of the vaccination program; phases two and three are scheduled for December and January. The operation is being carried out with UNICEF, UNRWA, and Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authorities.
Tedros said he is “encouraged that the ceasefire is still holding,” noting that it is allowing humanitarian teams to scale up essential health services and begin restoring Gaza’s heavily damaged medical infrastructure.
The UN Security Council endorsed a plan put forward by U.S. President Donald Trump, which helped secure the October 10 truce between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire, however, has repeatedly been shaken by bursts of violence across the territory, which has been ravaged by more than two years of conflict sparked by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.That assault left 1,221 people dead in Israel, most of them civilians, according to figures compiled by AFP from official sources.
In response, Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 69,500 Palestinians, Gaza’s health ministry reports. The ministry whose data is trusted by the UN says over half of the casualties are women and minors, though it does not distinguish combatants from civilian
