WHO hails Gaza polio drive but warns US pullout leaves agency cash-strapped in Strip

The renewed polio vaccination drive in Gaza is exceeding expectations, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, as it pleaded for ramped-up medical evacuations from the Strip and warned that US funding cuts could put a $46-million dent in the United Nations agency’s budget for Gaza.

Speaking from Gaza, Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, gave an update on a fresh polio child vaccination campaign and an overview of the health and funding situation in the Gaza Strip.

Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious and potentially fatal.

Since the disease resurfaced in Gaza for the first time in over 20 years, partially paralyzing a 10-month-old child last August, two vaccination rounds took place in September and October 2024.

More than 95 percent of targeted children received the necessary two doses of the oral vaccine. However environmental samples from two sites, collected in December 2024 and January 2025, found poliovirus was still circulating.

A new polio vaccination campaign targeting 591,000 children under 10 began on Saturday. Nearly 548,000 have been reached so far, WHO said.

Despite cold and rainy conditions, parents brought their children to vaccination centers.

“That’s a remarkable achievement, and personally I didn’t think we would reach that,” said Peeperkorn, citing high enthusiasm for the first two rounds.

A fourth round of vaccinations is planned in four weeks’ time, he said.

The latest vaccination campaign comes as Israel and Hamas observe a tenuous, month-old ceasefire.

More than 1.1 million vaccines were administered during the two previous campaigns, conducted by the WHO and UNICEF, and in coordination with the Israel’s Coordinator of Government Affairs in the Territories, a Defense Ministry agency that coordinates the provision of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

COGAT said at the time that it had facilitated humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza to allow the distribution of the vaccine.

The vaccinations involve multiple United Nations agencies, including the Israeli-boycotted UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

Israel has accused UNRWA of aiding Hamas and employing people who participated in the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. At least one former hostage has reported having been held in a UNRWA facility.

In addition to the polio vaccine drives, COGAT has assisted the WHO in evacuating ailing Gazans for treatment abroad.

Peeperkorn, the WHO spokesman, said he hoped medical evacuations to Jordan would begin soon, and pleaded for expanded medical corridors, including the pre-war traditional referral pathway to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

If the corridors are not expanded, “we will be medevacing for years to come,” said Peeperkorn, referring to medical evacuation.

Between February 1 and 24 — following the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal — some 889 patients, including 335 children, were evacuated via the Rafah crossing into Egypt, Peeperkorn said. A total of 6,295 patients, including 4,640 children, have been evacuated from Gaza since October 2023.

The WHO estimates that 10,000 to 14,000 patients need medical evacuation, including more than 4,000 children.

US pullout cuts into WHO budget as Gaza health system in shambles

The Gaza and West Bank Interim Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, conducted jointly earlier this month by the UN, World Bank and European Union, estimated that $7 billion will be needed to repair the territory’s devastated health system.

That amount was split between reconstruction costs and service delivery needs, with more than $4 billion needed in the first three years, it said.

The WHO’s 2025 operational response plan for the Palestinian territories requires $648 million.

Peeperkorn warned that the US pullout from the WHO meant the agency could no longer allocate some $46 million planned for use in Gaza, mostly this year.

US President Donald Trump pulled out of the UN body on January 20, some eight hours after returning to the White House. Trump pulled the US out of the WHO in 2020, during his first term, but the move was reversed by his successor Joe Biden a year later.

Peeperkorn said the US withdrawal from the WHO would leave certain areas of the agency’s activity in Gaza underfunded, namely: procurement, protection, personnel, rehabilitation and medical evacuations.

“It would have been so incredibly helpful in 2025. We could have used money for these areas,” he said.

He said the WHO could go “full steam ahead” for now, as it still had $40-60 million in the pipeline, but warned that the funds would need to last “for the whole of 2025, and then 2026 and beyond.”

Israel’s response to the Hamas onslaught has wreaked havoc on Gaza’s healthcare system. Israel has accused Hamas of using Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, to launch attacks and store weapons.

According to Peeperkorn, just 18 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain even partly functional, as do 59 of the 144 primary healthcare centers. Seven smaller field hospitals are also operational, he said.

Peeperkorn added that Gaza, whose population numbers some 2.2 million, had more than 3,500 hospital beds before the war. Since October 2023, that number has dropped as low as 1,110 and “now it’s probably back to 1,500,” he said, adding that the WHO hoped to get a pre-fabricated hospital into Gaza by March.

“Maybe there’s not a need to rebuild all those 36 hospitals but focus on the ones which are absolutely needed, and make sure that you strengthen primary healthcare and the referral pathway,” said Peeperkorn.

He insisted the health service and infrastructure in Gaza “has not collapsed,” instead retaining partial or minimal functionality.

“I really credit that to the resilience of the Gaza health workers,” he said.

Gaza had around 25,000 health workers before the war. Peeperkorn said many senior medical specialists had fled and he hoped a sustained ceasefire would see some of them return.

He said he had heard reports that 40 to 50 percent of the original health workers were still at their posts.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, more than 48,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll, which cannot be verified, does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.