More than 600,000 children in Gaza are at risk of permanent paralysis and chronic disabilities due to Israel’s prevention of polio vaccines in the besieged Palestinian region.
In a statement released on Sunday, Gaza’s Health Ministry called Israel’s blocking of polio vaccines ‘a time bomb’ that threatens to spread the epidemic.
It said 602,000 children in Gaza are at risk of ‘permanent paralysis and chronic disabilities’ unless they received the desperately needed vaccines, and warned that serious and catastrophic repercussions will be added to the already exhausted health system.
‘Preventing the entry of vaccines means the collapse of the efforts made over the past seven months, which means serious and catastrophic repercussions will be added to the targeted and exhausted health system, in addition to doubling the social and economic repercussions.’
Elsewhere in the statement, the ministry urged relevant health authorities to apply pressure on Israel to allow the entry of the vaccines.
Poliovirus is highly infectious and most often spreads through sewage and contaminated water. It mainly affects children under the age of five.
Last year, the ministry and several United Nations agencies and other partners conducted two rounds of polio vaccinations across Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Hamas resistance movement recently called for the prosecution of Israel’s leaders for war crimes as the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza continues with ‘systematic targeting of children’.
In Gaza, Hamas said, over 1,100 children have been abducted and ‘around 39,000 have become orphaned by losing one or both parents, while thousands others face the threat of famine, malnutrition, and disease.’
‘The fascist occupation continues its systematic targeting of children, using them as human shields, depriving them of education in Gaza.’
It reiterated that the international community’s silence, ‘which is a shameful stain on human rights and humanitarian organisations… only emboldens the occupation to escalate its crimes’ against innocent Palestinian children.
Hamas also warned that the resistance group will never forget the regime’s ‘crimes against our children’.
On 2nd March 2025, the Israeli state intensified its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian population in Gaza by imposing a second total blockade on the besieged enclave.
This act of collective punishment came immediately after Israel reneged on the terms of the first phase of a ceasefire agreement.
The complete sealing of all crossings has since cut off over two million Palestinians from vital supplies of food, fuel, and life-saving medicines, marking the longest blockade yet in the 17-month-long war.
Among the most critically impacted are pregnant women, whose access to maternal healthcare, food, and medicine has collapsed entirely under the siege.
Medical professionals on the ground report a catastrophic rise in miscarriage rates and a steep decline in neonatal survival.
Health experts warned in July 2024 that miscarriages in Gaza had surged by up to 300 per cent since Israel escalated its military offensive in October 2023.
As the blockade tightens, maternal health services, already on the brink, have deteriorated to non-functionality.
Zaher Al-Wahidi, who heads the Information Department at Gaza’s Ministry of Health, stated that the enclave’s health crisis has reached ‘an unprecedented level of deterioration, especially for pregnant women and children’.
According to Al-Wahidi, more than 60,000 pregnant women are now enduring acute malnutrition. This extreme deprivation puts their pregnancies in danger and has left around 3,500 children in a state of critical malnutrition – ‘hanging between life and death’, in his words.
He continued: ‘Continuing this siege and blocking medical and food aid means we will lose more lives, and history will record that the world stood by while Gaza’s children died of hunger.’
International law experts and rights advocates have condemned Israel’s actions. Salah Abdul-Ati, head of the International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (HESD), declared the deprivation of food, water, medicine, and healthcare to pregnant women is ‘a war crime and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.’
He held Israel, as the occupying power, directly accountable for the deliberate collapse of maternal health and the mass suffering of Palestinian women.
‘Israel commits a double crime,’ Abdul-Ati said, ‘not only by bombing civilians and displacing them but by systematically starving them and depriving pregnant women of basic health rights, putting their lives and their unborn babies at risk.’
On 9th March, Israel escalated the crisis further by cutting off electricity to Gaza’s only desalination plant in the south, compounding the collapse of basic sanitation and making it harder for vulnerable groups – including pregnant women – to access clean water.
The dehydration and poor hygiene conditions that followed have had dire consequences for maternal health.
Since the military campaign resumed full-force on 18 March following the collapse of the truce, the Israeli military has issued widespread displacement orders, forcibly uprooting over 280,000 Palestinians.
Many have been forced to flee on foot, without food, water, or medical supplies.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) warned that Israel’s total blockade has caused a critical shortage of maternal health supplies, including drugs needed to manage pregnancy complications and reduce the risk of death during childbirth.
According to their figures, around 520 babies in Gaza have required advanced medical care since the blockade began, but such care is now virtually unobtainable.
These statistics are not abstract. They translate into deeply personal tragedies for thousands of Palestinian women and their unborn children.
Noor Al-Abadleh, 24, from Gaza, had been trying to conceive for four years.
On a cold morning in February, she finally saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test.
Her joy was immense. ‘Finally, I’m pregnant, Ahmed. Imagine, I’m going to be a mama, and you’re going to be a baba,’ she said, weeping with joy in her husband’s arms.
But her excitement quickly gave way to fear.
Al-Abadleh suffers from a blood clotting disorder, and her doctor told her that to keep the pregnancy viable, she needed daily doses of heparin – a medication vital to ensure proper blood flow to the foetus.
‘I was committed to taking this injection as the doctor instructed,’ she said.
‘But something unexpected happened.’
That ‘something’ was the total blockade. In the days following 2nd March, Al-Abadleh searched desperately for heparin in Gaza’s public hospitals and private pharmacies.
But the medication had disappeared entirely.
‘Everyone told me the medicine wasn’t available,’ she recalled.
‘I asked them, “What should I do now? Should I lose my baby because Israel decided to deprive us of treatment?” No one could answer.’
On 26 March, she began suffering from abdominal cramps, and the next morning she woke in severe pain.
Her husband rushed her to a nearby clinic, but it was too late. She had lost the baby.
‘I didn’t just lose my baby. I lost my dream, too. A part of my heart is gone,’ she said.
‘I am a victim of a decision that killed our dreams before they were born.’
Lojain Abu Shanab, 27, from Beit Hanoun, was also forced into flight on foot during the most recent wave of forced displacement.
On 18 March, she walked three kilometres to western Gaza City. ‘I couldn’t find any transportation, so I had to escape on foot,’ she said.
‘After a few hours, I began feeling severe cramps, which intensified over time until I had a miscarriage.’
In central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, 28-year-old Rana Khaled sits in a makeshift tent, clutching her belly and whispering to the child inside her.
She is four months pregnant, finally expecting her first child after three years of trying.
But the joy of impending motherhood is now overshadowed by hunger and uncertainty.
‘I have dreamed of this child since I got married, but with each passing day, I feel like I’m losing him slowly,’ she said.
‘I have nothing to eat except some bread, and sometimes I sleep hungry.’
Two weeks ago, she visited a hospital after experiencing extreme fatigue.
She was told she was severely malnourished and that the foetus was not growing properly.
‘Since Israel closed the crossing, I haven’t received any food aid from the UN agencies that used to distribute it since the start of the war,’ she explained.
‘Meat is completely unavailable, and vegetable prices are exorbitant.’
Despite her own suffering, Khaled’s focus is entirely on her unborn child. ‘I don’t want anything for myself. I just want my baby to be born healthy. I want him to hear my voice and live like other children. What is his fault to be deprived of life before seeing the light?’
These are not isolated tragedies – they are the inevitable consequence of a systematic campaign to erase Palestinian life and dignity.
The targeting of pregnant women, the denial of healthcare, and the forced displacement of entire populations are acts that meet the legal definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
As the world watches and fails to act, Gaza’s unborn children continue to be buried beneath the rubble of international inaction and Israeli impunity.
