Israel is planning a power cut that puts 'Palestinians lives at risk', health ministry warns

The power outage “may affect medications and vaccines kept in the refrigerators of the health centers and health care clinics,” health minister, Mai Alkaila said late on Saturday.

Last week, the Israeli Electricity Company informed the Palestinian-owned Jerusalem District Electricity Company that it will start rationing electricity supplies across the occupied territory.

“Any power outage on the refrigerators and vaccines of the health centres will damage them and affect their effectiveness, especially those medicines kept at low temperatures. Some of them require permanent freezing during the storing period,” Alkaila said.

She added any power outage by IEC will certainly affect of children’s vaccines, “as most vaccines are stored at temperatures between 2-8°C, and there are a number of vaccines that need freezing at temperatures as low as minus 20°C, such as the polio vaccine.”

“One of the most important factors in responding to the effectiveness of vaccines is the cold chain of storing them. This means that administering vaccines that have not been kept in proper temperature will result in them being useless,” she urged.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. More than 600,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in a bid to illegally annex the Palestinian territory. 

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