Africa to get first batch of vaccines for deadly mpox virus

The first batch of mpox vaccines will finally reach Africa this week, weeks after they have been made available in other parts of the world. The 10,000 shots, donated by the US, will be used to tackle a dangerous new variant of the virus.

The fact that the continent has yet to receive any Mpox vaccines, while the vaccine is already available in more than 70 countries outside Africa, highlights a worrying problem in how international organizations are handling the global health emergency, doctors and scientists warned last week.

They said that despite the fact that people in Africa have suffered from the disease for decades, the World Health Organization (WHO) only this month formally began a process to make large amounts of the vaccine more readily available to African countries through international organizations. The process could have started years ago, they told Reuters. Mpox is a potentially deadly infection that causes flu-like symptoms and suppurating lesions and spreads through close physical contact. The WHO declared the disease a global health emergency on August 14 after a new variant, known as clade Ib, began spreading from the Democratic Republic of Congo to neighboring African countries.

As international agencies wait so long for WHO approval to buy and distribute the vaccine, African governments and the continent's health agency, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), have been forced to ask wealthy countries to donate vaccines instead.

This arduous process could fail as before if donor countries think they should keep the vaccine to protect their own citizens. Helen Rees, a member of the Africa CDC's MPOX emergency committee and executive director of the Wits RHI institute in Johannesburg, South Africa, told Reuters it was "really outrageous" that the continent has a vaccine shortage as Africa struggles with the upcoming COVID-19 pandemic, and was also disheartening.

The Africa CDC said 10 million doses could be needed across Africa to contain the epidemic. But the WHO only this month asked vaccine makers to submit information needed for the Mpox vaccine to receive emergency use authorization (WHO's accelerated approval of medical products).

He called on countries to donate vaccines until the process is completed in September. The WHO responded by saying it did not have the data necessary to conduct a full review for vaccine approval and that the emergency approval process could only be carried out after an international health emergency had occurred, according to The New York Times.