The first delivery of almost 100,000 doses of mpox vaccines will arrive in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, the African Union’s health watchdog said.
The vast central Africa country of around 100 million people is at the epicentre of the mpox outbreak, with cases and deaths rising.
“We are very pleased with the arrival of this first batch of vaccines in the DRC,” Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told AFP, adding that more than 99,000 doses were expected.
More than 17,500 cases and 629 deaths have been reported in the country since the start of the year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The vaccine doses will be transported onboard an aeroplane leaving the Danish capital Copenhagen on Wednesday evening and are due to arrive at Kinshasa’s international airport on Thursday at 1100 GMT.
– ‘Health war’ –
The Congolese National Institute of Public Health, which is in charge of managing the country’s mpox response, indicated that it was still waiting for details on the origin of the vaccines contained in the first delivery.
“Kinshasa is still waiting for documents from the Africa CDC that will provide information on these doses,” the institute’s director Dieudonne Mwamba Kazadi told AFP.
“We are in a health war against mpox. To face this disease, we need you,” Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said on X on Tuesday.
In Africa, mpox is now present in at least 13 countries, including Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic, according to figures from the Africa CDC dated August 27.
On Wednesday, Guinea said it had recorded its first confirmed case of the disease, convening an emergency meeting in response.
A health official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that the case was discovered in a sub-prefecture close to the Liberian border.
Outside the continent, the virus has also been detected in Sweden, Pakistan and the Philippines.
The WHO said last week that the first vaccine doses would arrive in the DRC in the following days, with other deliveries to follow.
The WHO said at the end of August that around 230,000 MVA-BN vaccine doses produced by Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic were “imminently available to be dispatched to affected regions”.
