The first batch of mpox vaccines in Africa will be delivered this week finally reach the continentweeks after they are made available in other parts of the world.
The 10,000 jabs, donated by the US, will be used to combat a dangerous new variant of the virus, previously known as monkeypox, after an outbreak in 2022 raised global alarm.
Vaccines are already available in more than 70 countries outside Africa. The continent’s lack of anti-MPOX vaccines so far highlights worrying problems in the way international agencies handle global public health emergencies, health officials and scientists warned last week.
They say it has taken the World Health Organization (WHO) until this month to officially begin the process needed to give African countries easy access to large quantities of vaccines through international agencies – despite the fact that the disease has been afflicting people there for decades. That process could have started years ago, they told Reuters.
Mpox is a potentially deadly infection that causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions and is spread through close physical contact. It was declared a global health emergency by the WHO on August 14 after the new variant, known as clade Ib, began spreading from the Democratic Republic of Congo to neighboring African countries.
The long wait for WHO approval for international agencies to purchase and distribute the vaccines has forced individual African governments and the continent’s public health agency, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), to instead request vaccine donations from wealthy countries.
That cumbersome process could collapse – as has happened before – if donor countries feel they must keep the vaccines to protect their own populations.
Helen Rees, a member of the Africa CDC’s MPOX emergency committee and executive director of the Wits RHI Research Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa, told Reuters it was “really outrageous” that Africa, after struggling to access vaccines during the Covid pandemic, had again fallen behind.
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According to the Africa CDC, 10 million doses may be needed on the continent to tackle the outbreak.
But the WHO only this month asked vaccine makers to submit the information needed to give the mpox shots emergency authorization — the WHO’s fast-track approval of medical products. It urged countries to donate shots until the process was completed in September.
For his part, according to the New York TimesThe WHO said it did not have the necessary data to conduct a full assessment for approval of the vaccine, and that an emergency authorization procedure can only be carried out after an international public health emergency has been declared.