By Ihab Rimawi
RAMALLAH, Wednesday, December 19, 2018 (WAFA) - Lara Hamdan had no idea when she went to the health services center in Ramallah to vaccinate her one-year-old daughter that the vaccination was not available and that she has to wait until Israel allows the vaccines to enter Palestine before she can get her daughter vaccinated.
Hamdan was concerned that if her daughter does not get the right vaccination for children on time, her health might be at risk.
Israel has halted admission of all vaccinations to the Palestinian territories and has been holding them at its ports for over three months. It claims that a 1986 law s import of the vaccines from only 10 countries. However the Palestinian Ministry of Health has been importing vaccines ever since it was established in 1995 from the countries that were certified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the vaccines were brought to Palestine by the children fund, UNICEF.
Director general of the public health department in the Ministry of Health, Yasser Bouzieh, warned that barring or delaying entry of vaccines will lead to outbreak of many diseases that might become an epidemic and will affect not only Palestine, but the neighboring countries and the region as a whole.
He said many diseases have been eradicated in Palestine due to the vaccination and by preventing them from reaching Palestine, it means diseases such as polio, which the last case discovered was in 1988, along with many other serious diseases such as chicken box and measles WHO had said Palestine was free of them will come back to threaten life of children.
Bouzieh said vaccination for tuberculosis will disappear from the stores of the Ministry of Health by the end of this month, and vaccine for pertussis or whooping cough has been unavailable for more than a month as a result of the Israeli decision. Stockpile of other vaccinations is running out.
Undersecretary of the Health Ministry, Assad Ramlawi, wondered about the timing of the Israeli decision, particularly since this law has been in place for 32 years. “So why now,” he wondered.
He said UNICEF has been bringing the vaccines to Palestine since 1995 and they were all certified by WHO. He said the 10 countries Israel says we should get the vaccines from may not be certified by WHO and therefore the ministry will not be able to get the vaccines from these countries.
Ramlawi said efforts by UNICEF and WHO to get Israel to change its decision have not yielded any results so far, expressing hope that pressure on Israel at the United Nations may get it to change that decision and allow the vaccines to reach Palestine before it is too late.
M.K.
