The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday that its teams visited a school in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on the second day of the polio vaccination campaign, "suffering from horrific conditions for 15,000 displaced people sheltering inside, and in need of a ceasefire."

UNRWA spokesperson Louise Waterridge added in a video clip published by the agency on its account on the X platform: “On the second day of the polio vaccination campaign in central Gaza, our teams visited children from tent to tent and from classroom to classroom.”

She explained that "one of the UNRWA schools in Deir al-Balah is suffering from horrific conditions for the 15,000 displaced people taking shelter inside it."

She stressed that "the children of the Gaza Strip need a ceasefire more than anything else."

Earlier on Monday, UNRWA said its teams and partners had reached about 87,000 children in central Gaza on the first day of a polio vaccination campaign on Sunday.

This came according to the media director of the UN agency, Enas Hamdan, in a statement to the Anadolu Agency, in which she said, "The vaccination campaign entered its second day in the middle of the Gaza Strip."

The Minister of Health, Majed Abu Ramadan, announced that the vaccination campaign program will be as follows: from Sunday until Wednesday (1-4/9/2024) in Deir al-Balah Governorate, from Thursday until next Sunday (5-8/9/2024) in Khan Yunis Governorate, and from Monday until Thursday (9-12/9/2024) in Gaza and the North Governorate.

He stressed that the Ministry of Health is leading the vaccination campaign in the southern governorates of Palestine in cooperation with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNRWA, confirming that the vaccine is completely safe.

Medical sources reported that thousands of citizens went to the centers that were announced in the central governorate to vaccinate their children under the age of ten against polio.

On August 16, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a 7-day humanitarian truce to implement a polio campaign targeting 640,000 children, which was directly supported by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at the time.

This call came after the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the registration of the first confirmed case of polio in the Gaza Strip, in a 10-month-old child.

Over the months of the Israeli aggression on the Strip, health and human rights organizations warned of the spread of diseases and epidemics due to the shortage of medicines and vaccinations, and the difficult health and living conditions experienced by the displaced.

Israel, the occupying power, is waging a devastating war on Gaza, resulting in about 135,000 martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens, in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

In contempt of the international community, Israel continues the war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate halt, and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and to improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.