No Vaccination for Palestinian Children, Decides the Occupying Power, Israel

When she went to the Ramallah health center to vaccinate her one-year-old daughter, Lara Hamdan did not know that the vaccine was not available and that she had to wait for the Israeli authorities to allow the vaccines to enter. in Palestine before her. The girl can be vaccinated.

Hamdan worried that if her daughter did not get the right vaccine for the children on time, her health could be in danger.

Israel has suspended the admission of all vaccines to the Palestinian territories and has kept them in their ports for more than three months, saying that a 1986 law allows the importation of vaccines from only 10 countries. However, since its inception in 1995, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has been importing vaccines from countries certified by the World Health Organization (WHO), and UNICEF has brought vaccines to Palestine.

The director general of the department of public health of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Yasser Bouzieh, warned that prohibiting or delaying the entry of vaccines would cause the emergence of many diseases that could cause an epidemic and affect not only Palestine, but also the country . The neighboring countries and the region as a whole.

He said that many diseases had been eradicated in Palestine through vaccination and that by preventing them from reaching Palestine, it meant diseases such as polio, the last case of which was discovered in 1988, as well as many other serious diseases such as chicken pox. and measles. WHO had previously declared that Palestine was free of these diseases, but now it is feared that they will threaten the lives of children again.

Bouzieh said the TB vaccine would disappear from the Ministry of Health stores by the end of the month, and that the pertussis vaccine, commonly known as "whooping cough," was not available for more than a month. Because of the Israeli decision. Stocks of other vaccines are also depleted.

Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, Assad Ramlawi, questioned the timing of the Israeli decision, especially since the law has been in force for 32 years. "Then, why now?" He asks.

He added that UNICEF has been importing vaccines to Palestine since 1995 and that all are certified by the WHO. He added that the 10 countries in which Israel allows the importation of vaccines may not be certified by the WHO and, therefore, the ministry will not be able to obtain vaccines from these countries.

Ramlawi also said, according to WAFA, that efforts made by UNICEF and WHO to bring Israel to a change of decision have not worked so far, expressing hope that pressure on Israel to persuade the authorities to change their decision . and allow vaccines to reach Palestine before it's too late.