GAZA CITY / ISTANBUL

One in five children in the Gaza Strip has missed basic vaccinations over the past two years amid Israel’s war and blockade on the territory, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said Friday.

“Reports indicate that one in every five children in Gaza has missed their essential vaccines,” the agency said in a statement on US social media company X.

The announcement comes as the Ministry of Health, UNRWA, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, prepare to launch a catch-up vaccination campaign on Sunday across 150 health centers in the enclave, according to earlier data from the ministry.

UNRWA said the campaign aims to reach 44,000 children in Gaza to provide life-saving vaccines and screen them for malnutrition.

Children make up 47% of Gaza’s population, or about 980,000, according to an April 2025 report by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

The campaign follows two years of Israeli genocide that caused a near-total collapse of Gaza’s health system and halted immunization programs, leaving hundreds of thousands of children unvaccinated.

At the start of the war, health facilities run by the ministry and UNRWA provided regular monthly immunizations, but vaccine supplies ran out due to Israeli restrictions and the ban on medical imports.

Over the past two years, the Health Ministry and international organizations managed to carry out only two emergency polio vaccination campaigns, on Sept. 1, 2024, and Feb. 22, 2025.

According to UNRWA, the upcoming campaign will deliver vaccines through 24 health centers and medical points across the Gaza Strip as part of efforts to restore basic health services for children.

Since the ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, Gaza’s health sector has been struggling to recover despite severe shortages of supplies, facilities, and equipment.

Ismail al-Thawabteh, director of the government media office in Gaza, told Anadolu on Sunday that Israel has violated the ceasefire and its humanitarian provisions by preventing the entry of medical supplies among the limited humanitarian aid allowed into the enclave.

Meanwhile, Munir al-Barsh, director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said on Telegram that Israel continues to block the entry of critical medicines, including those for children suffering from malnutrition, allowing in only limited primary-care drugs while denying supplies for operating rooms and emergency wards.

Israel has maintained control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing since May 2024, after destroying and burning its facilities and banning travel through it, worsening the humanitarian and medical crisis in the enclave.

Israel has killed close to 69,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 170,600 others in attacks in Gaza since October 2023.