Routine vaccines are saving children lives

"Despite the terrible situation linked to this escalation, I had to evacuate our home with my three children," Benan Al Jabali, a mother from the Gaza Strip, recalled with a heavy heart. "We found ourselves at Al-Shifa Hospital, desperate and with nothing—no clothes, no food, and no water. It was a harsh reality." 

With the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, more than 16,000 children were at risk of missing their routine vaccinations. The conflict had disrupted healthcare services, leaving diseases like measles and polio looming over them.  

UNICEF and partners continue to strive to protect these children from preventable diseases and delivered 962,550 doses of essential vaccines, including for measles, pneumonia, and polio. The vaccines arrived in December 2023 and are a lifeline for the children. 

Samaheer is a nurse working tirelessly to address major health challenges. She highlights the urgency of the situation: "We are administering the Hepatitis B vaccine to one-week old infants. Every day, we receive between 200 and 250 children in urgent need of vaccination, a significant number given the severe shortage we face in these challenging conditions." 

With the vaccines now available, the Ministry of Health (MoH) began successfully administering them with the support from UNICEF, WHO and UNRWA, providing the children of the Gaza Strip with the protection they urgently needed.  

The entire health system is at risk in the Gaza Strip, with two third of the Gaza hospitals not functioning. Beyond this effort in vaccination, UNICEF and partners are delivering critical medical supplies, especially for surgery rooms, that have benefitted to more than 500,000 persons.  

UNICEF continues to provide multisectoral supplies and interventions to prevent and respond to the growing number of diseases such as diarrhea and respiratory illnesses, through scaling up the Primary Health Care interventions. This was achieved thanks to the support of the Governments of Germany, Norway, and Spain, and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).