The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners are preparing to launch a campaign this month to vaccinate thousands of children in Gaza against polio after the disease was detected in sewage samples in two locations.

Boys and girls caught in the war wonder when the fighting will end, said UNICEF communications officer Salim Owais, who spent eight days in the enclave.

Mr. Owais visited several hospitals where he met children suffering from various diseases and war injuries amid the ongoing lack of doctors, medicines and equipment. 

Speaking from Deir Al-Balah, he told UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki that “the picture is really grim in Gaza in general, but in a different way in hospitals.”