Israel and the USA will cooperate to implement a mass vaccination of residents in Gaza against polio. This was stated by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to reporters in Tel Aviv.
We are cooperating with the Israeli government on this, and I estimate that we can get started with a plan to do this within the next few weeks, said Blinken and continued:
This is urgent. It is a matter of life and death.
The UN has already developed a plan to vaccinate children against polio in the Gaza Strip, which can begin before the end of the month. However, to succeed with the necessary vaccination, a ceasefire must be declared in two rounds, each lasting a week, according to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
The US Secretary of State did not go into details on how the vaccination would be carried out, but said that the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant shared his assessment of the situation.
There are approximately 640,000 children in Gaza; the first confirmed polio case was discovered at the end of last week.
