UN agencies have called for two seven-day breaks in fighting in Gaza to vaccinate more than 640,000 children against polio, which has been detected in the wastewater, AFP reports.

The UN’s health and children’s agencies said they had drawn up detailed plans to reach children across the besieged Palestinian territory, starting later this month. But that would require pauses in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Unicef said.

They said they were planning two rounds of a vaccination campaign across the Gaza Strip, starting in late August, against type 2 poliovirus (cVDPV2).

“WHO and Unicef request all parties to the conflict to implement humanitarian pauses in the Gaza Strip for seven days to allow for two rounds of vaccination campaigns to take place,” they said.

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