9 days, 640,000 children, 1.3M doses. The plan to vaccinate Gaza's young against polio

JERUSALEM (AP) — The U.N. health agency and partners are launching a campaign starting Sunday to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children in Gaza against polio, an ambitious effort amid a devastating war that has destroyed the territory's healthcare system.

The campaign comes after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization says the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.

Most people who have polio do not experience symptoms, and those who do usually recover in a week or so. But there is no cure, and when polio causes paralysis it is usually permanent. If the paralysis affects breathing muscles, the disease can be fatal.

The vaccination effort will not be easy: Gaza’s roads are largely destroyed, its hospitals badly damaged and its population spread into isolated pockets.

WHO said Thursday that it has reached an agreement with Israel for limited pauses in the fighting to allow for the vaccination campaign to take place. Even so, such a large-scale campaign will pose major difficulties in a territory blanketed in rubble, where 90% of Palestinians are displaced.

In its first statement on the campaign, Israel said Saturday that the vaccination program would continue through Sept. 9 and last eight hours a day.

On Saturday, Gaza's Health Ministry announced a soft start to the vaccination campaign, with a small number of children receiving doses in the southern city of Khan Younis.

A three-day vaccination campaign in central Gaza will begin Sunday, during a “humanitarian pause” lasting from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m., and another day can be added if needed, said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories.

In coordination with Israeli authorities, the effort will then move to southern Gaza and northern Gaza during similar pauses, he said during a news conference by video from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

The vaccination campaign targets 640,000 children under 10, according to WHO. Each child will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second to be administered four weeks after the first.

The vaccination sites span Gaza, both inside and outside Israeli evacuation zones, from Rafah in the south to the northern reaches of the territory.

The Gaza Health Ministry released a list of roughly 160 sites across the territory — including medical centers, hospitals and schools — where the vaccinations will take place. Most of the sites are in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, where the population density of children under 10 is the highest.

Around 1.3 million doses of the vaccine traveled through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint and are currently being held in “cold-chain storage” in a warehouse in Deir al-Balah. That means the warehouse is able to maintain the correct temperature so the vaccines do not lose their potency.

Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be delivered to Gaza soon.

The vaccines will be trucked to distribution sites by a team of over 2,000 medical volunteers, said Ammar Ammar, a spokesperson for UNICEF.

Mounting any sort of campaign that requires traversing the Gaza Strip and interacting with its medical system is bound to pose difficulties.

The U.N. estimates that approximately 65% of the total road network in Gaza has been damaged. Nineteen of the strip's 36 hospitals are out of service.

The north of the territory is cut off from the south, and travel between the two areas has been challenging throughout the war because of Israeli military operations. Aid groups have had to suspend trips due to security concerns, after convoys were targeted by the Israeli military.

Peeperkorn said Friday that WHO cannot do house-to-house vaccinations in Gaza, as they have in other polio campaigns. When asked about the viability of the effort, Peeperkorn said WHO thinks “it is feasible if all the pieces of the puzzle are in place."

The WHO says children typically need about three to four doses of oral polio vaccine — two drops per dose — to be protected against polio. If they don’t receive all of the doses, they are vulnerable to infection.

Doctors have previously found that children who are malnourished or who have other illnesses might need more than 10 doses of the oral polio vaccine to be fully protected.

Yes, but they are very rare.

Billions of doses of the oral vaccine have been given to children worldwide and it is safe and effective. But in about 1 in 2.7 million doses, the live virus in the vaccine can paralyze the child who receives the drops.

The polio virus that triggered this latest outbreak is a mutated virus from an oral polio vaccine. The oral polio vaccine contains weakened live virus and in very rare cases, that virus is shed by those who are vaccinated and can evolve into a new form capable of starting new epidemics.

Associated Press reporters Samy Magdy in Cairo and Maria Cheng in London contributed.

A Palestinian child waits to receive a polio vaccination at a hospital in Khan Younis, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child at a hospital in Khan Younis, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk next a dark streak of sewage flowing into the streets of Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

CAPTION CORRECTION: Displaced infant Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian, 11-month-old, who suffers from polio, is carried by his mother, center, at a makeshift tent camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Displaced kids sort through trash at a street in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran launched a satellite into space Saturday with a rocket built by the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, state-run media reported, the latest for a program the West fears helps Tehran advance its ballistic missile program.

Iran described the launch as a success, which would be the second such launch to put a satellite into orbit with the rocket. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the launch’s success.

Footage later released by Iranian media showed the rocket blast off from a mobile launcher. An Associated Press analysis of the video and other imagery later released suggested the launch happened at the Guard’s launch pad on the outskirts of the city of Shahroud, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) east of the capital, Tehran.

The launch comes amid heightened tensions gripping the wider Middle East over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, during which Tehran launched an unprecedented direct missile-and-drone attack on Israel. Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels, raising concerns among nonproliferation experts about Tehran's program.

Iran identified the satellite-carrying rocket as the Qaem-100, which the Guard used in January for another successful launch. Qaem means “upright” in Iran's Farsi language.

The solid-fuel, three-stage rocket put the Chamran-1 satellite, weighing 60 kilograms (132 pounds), into a 550-kilometer (340-mile) orbit, state media reported. The rocket bore a Quranic verse: "That which is left by Allah is better for you, if you are believers.”

A state-owned subsidiary of Iran's Defense Ministry and experts at the Aerospace Research Institute built the satellite with others to “test hardware and software systems for orbital maneuver technology validation,” state media said, without elaborating.

Gen. Hossein Salami, the head of the Guard, praised the launch in a statement and said scientists successfully overcame “the atmosphere of extensive and oppressive international sanctions."

The U.S. State Department and the American military did not immediately respond to requests for comment over the Iranian launch.

The United States had previously said Iran’s satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and called on Tehran to undertake no activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. U.N. sanctions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program expired last October.

Under Iran’s relatively moderate former President Hassan Rouhani, the Islamic Republic slowed its space program for fear of raising tensions with the West. Hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, a protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who came to power in 2021, has pushed the program forward. Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May.

It's unclear what Iran's new president, the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, wants for the program as he was silent on the issue while campaigning.

The U.S. intelligence community’s worldwide threat assessment this year said Iran's development of satellite launch vehicles “would shorten the timeline” for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles can be used to deliver nuclear weapons. Iran is now producing uranium close to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers. Tehran has enough enriched uranium for “several” nuclear weapons, if it chooses to produce them, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly has warned.

Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its space program, like its nuclear activities, is for purely civilian purposes. However, U.S. intelligence agencies and the IAEA say Iran had an organized military nuclear program up until 2003.

The launch also came ahead of the second anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, which sparked nationwide protests against Iran's mandatory headscarf, or hijab, law and the country's Shiite theocracy.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

This undated photo provided by Iranian Space Agency, ISA, shows Chamran-1 satellite. Iran launched the satellite into space Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, with a rocket built by the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, state-run media reported, the latest for a program the West fears helps Tehran advance its ballistic missile program. (ISA via AP)