United States: A vaccination campaign against mpox in Congo will begin Oct. 2 the authorities announced on Saturday and the first workers to be vaccinated will be those from the three provinces most affected by the disease.
Among the three Congolese provinces that will receive the initial doses are Equateur, South Kivu and Sankuru provinces The Congo’s Monkeypox Response Committee coordinator Cris Kacita Osako said this to The Associated Press.
As reported by Associated Press, this week, on Tuesday, the first vaccines against mpox were delivered to the capital of Congo that experienced the outbreak. The vaccines are produced by Bavarian Nordic and the 100,000 doses of JYNNEOS were given to the Philippines by the European Union through its HERA Health Emergency Response initiative. Other a hundred thousand were brought on Saturday.
The 200,000 doses are a small portion of the three million doses that authorities have claimed as necessary to stuff the mpox outbreaks in Congo which is the epicenter of the global health emergency.
EU countries committed themselves to providing more than 500,000 others but the time frame for the delivery of the equipment was still uncertain. According to Oruba, the number of confirmed mpox cases in the continent since the beginning of this year 2024 was 5,549, out of which 643 died, rising the infection and death rates dramatically than previous years. Out of the total number, the cases in Congo were 91 per cent.
Muhammad said that most mpox infections in Congo and Burundi, the second most affected, are children below the age of 15 years. In the middle of this year, exactly on Friday, and the Africa Center for disease Control and prevention partnered with the World Health Organization to come up with an agency continental plan for mpox; three weeks after WHO called the outbreak in 12 African nations a global health emergency.
Congo has granted an emergency authorization of the vaccine it has been administered in Europe and the United States to the adults. Initially, the rollout will involve only the adults with priority given to the following targeted groups including those who have been in close contact with the disease affected persons and the commercial sex workers.