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Gaza health workers Israel-Hamas polio vaccine rollout challenges
There were reports of both continued fighting and unusual calm in different parts of Gaza on Friday after the World Health Organization said Israel had made “a preliminary commitment for area-specific humanitarian pauses” to facilitate an upcoming polio vaccination campaign aimed at stemming the spread of the debilitating illness among children in the war-torn enclave.
An infant boy has been left partially paralyzed after being diagnosed with polio earlier this month, in what the WHO reported as the first case in Gaza in 25 years. Abdul Rahman’s mother spoke with CBS News this week in the tent where she and her family now live. She begged for help for her son, saying there was no treatment available in the camp and lamenting the dire sanitary conditions there.
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Health workers have said the closure of many hospitals in Gaza, due to destruction from Israeli strikes and extremely limited fuel supplies, was contributing to lower than normal vaccination rates in the territory since the Israel-Hamas war began in October.
“Without humanitarian pauses, as we call it at the U.N., a campaign delivery which is already implemented in incredible constraints, complex environments, will not be possible,” Rik Peeperkorn, a senior WHO official for the Palestinian territories, said during a Thursday briefing.
Peeperkorn said the vaccination campaign would take place over phases of three days each, beginning in central Gaza, then moving to the south and the north of the territory. It will aim to provide two drops of the oral polio vaccine to more than 640,000 children under the age of 10. The WHO said for the rollout to be successful and to prevent international spread, there needs to be at least a 90% vaccine coverage in that age group.
U.N. aid workers said 2,700 health care workers at medical centers and mobile units would deliver and administer the vaccines from Sunday.
EYAD BABA/AFP/Getty
Peeperkorn said the WHO and partner agencies were “ready to deliver the campaign” and that preparations had been completed, with 1.26 million vaccine doses and 500 vaccine carriers delivered to Gaza. He said 400,000 additional doses would “arrive to Gaza soon.”
“Due to the insecurity, the damage, the road infrastructure and population displacement, but also based on our experience with this kind of campaigns globally and worldwide, the three days might not be enough to achieve adequate vaccination,” he said. “When needed, the campaign will be extended by one day per zone or even more when necessary.”
One concern voiced by a medical professional on the ground in Gaza has been how to keep the vaccines chilled. Polio vaccines need to be kept continually refrigerated before use, in what’s called cold chain storage, or they go bad.
Dr. Majed Jaber, who works in Gaza’s coastal Al-Mawasi district, an Israeli-designated evacuation zone where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought shelter, said earlier this week that only about nine health care facilities across Gaza were still able to facilitate cold chain storage. He said there was no refrigeration in the tent camps or at most local medical facilities in the enclave, and that with each new mass displacement under Israeli evacuation orders, it becomes harder for medical professionals to organize care.
“What are we supposed to do? It feels really helpless,” he said.
Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said Friday that cold chain equipment would be transferred from one region to another as the polio vaccination program gets underway. The ministry published maps of the locations of vaccination centers and said it had sent text messages to Palestinians in Gaza informing them of vaccination dates.
Separately, the Israel Defense Forces said it had ended its months-long operation in southern and central Gaza, which it said had killed 250 Hamas fighters. An Israeli military spokesperson told the AFP news agency that there were currently no operations in the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah areas.
An AFP journalist reported that Israeli artillery pounded western parts of Gaza City on Friday, however, while a medical source told the news agency an Israeli strike near Khan Younis had killed three people.
WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday when speaking about the upcoming vaccination campaign that the best thing for the health of children in Gaza would be a complete ceasefire.
“The best medicine is peace,” he said.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
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Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
