The Democratic Republic of Congo received its first batch of mpox vaccines on Thursday (5), a move that health officials hope will help contain an outbreak that has prompted the UN to declare a global public health emergency.
Congo is the epicenter of the outbreak, which has spread to neighboring countries and beyond, but a lack of vaccines in Africa has hampered efforts to stop the spread of the potentially deadly disease.
A plane carrying the doses manufactured by Bavarian Nordic and donated by the European Union landed in the capital Kinshasa at around 1 p.m. local time, Reuters reporters at the airport said.
Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba Mulamba told reporters the vaccine had already proven its worth in the United States and would be distributed to adults in Congo.
“We know which provinces are heavily affected, especially Equateur and South Kivu… The idea is to contain the virus as quickly as possible,” he added.
Vaccination campaign
This first delivery contains 99,000 doses. Another shipment, scheduled for Saturday (7), will bring the total amount delivered to 200,000 doses, said Laurent Muschel, head of the EU’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA).
Overall, Europe aims to deliver 566,000 doses wherever needs are greatest in the region, Muschel told Reuters.
“Based on the number of cases, the next country [para entregas] must be Burundi, but the country’s medical agency must authorize it,” they explained.
The vaccine’s arrival in Congo should begin to address a huge inequality that has left African countries without access to the two vaccines used in a global measles outbreak in 2022, while they were widely available in Europe and the United States.
Congo said it would launch its vaccination campaign on October 8 to allow time for a full awareness campaign to overcome mistrust in some communities.
Mpox usually causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions, and can be fatal. The disease spreads through close contact, including sexual contact.
There were 19,710 suspected cases of mpox reported in Congo in the first eight months of this year, according to the local health ministry. Of these, 5,041 were confirmed and 655 were fatal.
This content was originally published in Congo receives first batch of vaccines against mpox on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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