How many children were vaccinated in Gaza in 2025
Executive summary
Official reporting shows large, campaign-driven vaccination activity in Gaza during 2025 but different initiatives targeted different age groups and doses, making a single unique‑child total impossible to derive from available sources; the clearest, documented figure is that nearly 603,000 children under 10 received polio vaccine during a five‑day campaign in February 2025, with additional rounds and smaller catch‑up and routine vaccinations documented elsewhere [1] [2] [3].
1. The headline figure: mass polio campaign reached nearly 603,000 children
A World Health Organization/UNICEF joint release and related UNICEF reporting say a five‑day mass polio vaccination round in the Gaza Strip concluded at the end of February 2025 having reached nearly 603,000 children under 10 with novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) — the clearest single‑campaign number available in reporting [1] [2].
2. The second‑dose and subsequent campaign numbers complicate a straight total
WHO and UNICEF reports show follow‑up activity: a subsequent round reported 556,774 children under 10 receiving a second dose, and overall planning aimed to administer nOPV2 to over 591,000 children during the February campaign window — figures that describe doses delivered across rounds rather than discrete, non‑overlapping children, so they cannot simply be summed without double‑counting [4] [5].
3. Catch‑up routine immunization added thousands, but aimed for tens of thousands more
Separate from the mass polio effort, a UN‑led catch‑up immunization campaign launched in November 2025 (noting the campaign spans rounds into December/January) reported more than 13,700 children vaccinated in its first round and set targets to reach roughly 44,000 children who missed routine immunizations because of the conflict [6] [7] [8]. Those figures are for routine antigens (pentavalent, MMR, PCV, rota) and are reported separately from polio drives [8].
4. Routine immunizations recorded in UNICEF situation reports show additional dose counts
UNICEF situation reporting for 2025 recorded routine immunization activity such as 2,792 children aged 0–11 months receiving the third pentavalent dose — a concrete, routine‑schedule figure that supplements campaign data but again represents doses of specific antigens rather than unique children across all programs [9].
5. Why a single “how many children were vaccinated in Gaza in 2025” number cannot be precisely stated
The sources report campaign reach (e.g., nearly 603,000 children reached with polio vaccine) and dose counts for rounds or specific antigens (e.g., 556,774 second polio doses; 2,792 pentavalent3 doses; 13,700+ in a catch‑up round), but they do not provide a reconciled, de‑duplicated tally of unique children who received any vaccine in 2025; overlapping campaigns (same children receiving multiple doses or different antigens), differing age bands, and phased rounds mean the data cannot be summed into an accurate single number from the documents available [1] [4] [6] [9].
6. Reasonable summary statement and limits of reporting
Based on authoritative UN reporting, the strongest documented statement is that mass polio campaigns in early 2025 reached on the order of 600,000 children under 10 (nearly 603,000) with nOPV2, with large follow‑up rounds delivering hundreds of thousands of additional polio doses and separate catch‑up/routine activities vaccinating thousands more [1] [4] [6] [9]; however, a precise count of unique children vaccinated during the calendar year 2025 cannot be produced from the cited sources because they do not reconcile overlapping doses, age ranges, and campaign phases [1] [4] [8].