DR Congo on standby for first vaccines to fight mpox outbreak

RFI

20 August 2024 at 5:02 am·2-min read

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) hopes to receive its first doses of an mpox vaccine by next week, following promises from the United States and Japan to help it fight its outbreak, the Congolese health minister said on Monday.

The government is launching a €45 million response plan for awareness campaigns, team deployment and patient care, but it does not include vaccines, RFI's correspondent reports.

The DRC hopes to receive doses as early as next week.

On Monday DRC Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba Mulamba said that Japan and the United States had pledged vaccines.

"We've just finished discussions with USAID and the US government. I hope that by next week we'll be able to see the vaccines arrive," he told reporters.

Their arrival would help to address a huge inequity that left African countries with no access to the two shots used in a 2022 global mpox outbreak, while the vaccines were widely available in Europe and the United States.

The World Health Organization (WHO) last week declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years as a new variant of the disease, known as clade Ib, spread rapidly in Africa.

"We need about 3.5 million doses," Kamba said. "Thanks to Belgium we will have 215,000, thanks to Japan we should have three million doses and the United States is wondering how much to send because they themselves need these vaccines."

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Japan-based KM Biologics is one of the manufacturers of an mpox vaccine.

(with Reuters)

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