JAKARTA - The blockade conducted by Israel since March leaves more than 600,000 children in the Gaza Strip, Palestine threatened with permanent paralysis and chronic defects.
Gaza's Ministry of Health said the UN-backed polio vaccination campaign aimed at targeting more than 600,000 children had been suspended, so the enclave was at risk of reinfecting a crippling disease that had almost been eradicated.
While citing WAFA, medical sources in Gaza say 602,000 children are at risk of permanent paralysis and chronic defects, unless Israel provides a polio vaccine that has been suspended for 40 days.
The same source explained that preventing vaccine shipments prevented efforts to implement the fourth phase of strengthening polio prevention.
They noted Gaza's children were threatened with serious health complications and had never happened before due to a lack of adequate nutrition and drinking water.
Gaza's Ministry of Health spokesman, Khalil Deqran, said blocking supplies endangered the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients at Gaza Strip hospitals.
If the polio vaccine doesn't arrive soon, "we anticipate a real disaster. Children and patients should not be used as a means of political extortion," he said.
In addition, he said 60,000 children are now showing symptoms of malnutrition.
Israel is known to have reimposed a total blockade on all supplies to Gaza since early March, re-launching military operations on March 18 in line with the end of the ceasefire in effect since January 19.
Since then, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,600 Palestinians according to Gaza's health authorities, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee homes as Israel seized what it called Gaza's soil buffer zone.
Israel says its blockade is aimed at suppressing the Hamas militants that control Gaza to release 59 hostages who have been detained since the October 7, 2023 attacks.
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Hamas himself said he was ready to release them, but only as part of the deal that ended the war.
Separately, the head of the UN Palestinian aid agency, UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini described the blockade as a collective punishment for Gazans.
"Humanist aid is used as a bargaining chip and war weapon. Extortion must be stopped, supply must be distributed, the hostages must be released, the ceasefire must continue," Lazzarini said in a post on X on Tuesday.
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