WHO vaccination campaign resumes in Gaza as strike injures six at polio clinic

# WHO vaccination campaign resumes in Gaza as strike injures six at polio clinic

A new phase of Gaza’s polio vaccination campaign has begun in the north, but the rollout is taking place under conditions that United Nations agencies say could leave thousands of children out of reach and a fresh strike has already wounded people at a vaccination centre.

UNICEF said the campaign resumed in northern Gaza after multiple delays, despite what it described as extremely harsh conditions. The second and final dose of the oral vaccine is now being delivered after the first phase in September reached more than 560,000 children aged over one day old and under 10. The latest round is supposed to inoculate an estimated 119,000 children in the north, but the UN says that target is now unlikely to be met because of access constraints.

The problem is not only logistics but security. UN agencies said 216 teams are working across 106 fixed sites to offer the vaccine, including to Palestinians newly displaced by Israel’s expanding ground invasion in northern Gaza. Even with those teams in place, the UN says Israeli attacks and restrictions on movement are making it difficult to reach parts of the north, particularly Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon.

Later on Saturday, the World Health Organization said four children were injured in a strike on a polio vaccination centre in Gaza City. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X that six people, including four children, were injured when the Sheikh Radwan primary health care centre was struck while parents were bringing their children for vaccination during a humanitarian pause agreed to allow the campaign to proceed. WHO did not say who launched the strike.

The report from Al Jazeera said its correspondent in the area believed the centre had been targeted with a sound bomb by an Israeli quadcopter. That account could not be independently confirmed in the evidence supplied, but it reflects the broader pattern described in the same report: the north remains an active war zone while health agencies are trying to run a campaign that depends on safe access and predictable pauses.

The urgency of the campaign is rooted in Gaza’s recent health history. Polio had been eradicated in the enclave 25 years ago, but the destruction of the health system during the war created conditions for the virus to return. Earlier this year, a 10-month-old Palestinian baby was partly paralysed because of the virus, prompting the vaccination drive. The current round is therefore not just a routine public-health intervention. It is an emergency effort to stop further spread in a population already under extreme strain.

The scale of the challenge is large. The first phase of the campaign in September reached more than 560,000 children, but health workers now fear many more may miss the second dose because the north is so hard to access. The UN’s warning that its target is unlikely to be achieved is significant because the success of a campaign like this depends on broad coverage, not just a visible presence in a few locations.

The situation also has regional implications. Authorities are trying to prevent the virus from spreading beyond Gaza, including to neighbouring countries such as Israel. That makes the campaign a public-health measure with consequences beyond the enclave itself.

For now, the picture is stark: the vaccination drive continues, but so do the attacks, displacement and access restrictions that threaten it. The WHO warning shows how fragile humanitarian health operations have become in northern Gaza, where even a campaign meant to protect children from paralysis is unfolding inside an active conflict zone.