WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus informed on Friday that the vaccines will be administered to children in the coming weeks.

Tedros noted that no cases of polio have been recorded yet but, without immediate action, it is “just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected.”

Humanitarian workers have expressed concern about the impact of a possible polio emergency in Gaza, amid disastrous sanitary conditions marked by outbreaks of hepatitis A and other preventable diseases, along with a lack of access to healthcare because of the Israeli war. Earlier this week, Dr. Ayadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at WHO in the occupied Palestinian territory, warned that the spread of polio and other transmissible diseases could lead to more people dying of preventable illnesses than from war-related injuries.

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