(Abuja) Africa is witnessing a rapid increase in MPOX cases with nearly 4,000 reported in the past week, the continent’s public health body said on Tuesday, reiterating its call for the long-awaited vaccines that were due to arrive this week but are now delayed.
Some 81 deaths from COPD were reported in Africa last week, bringing the total number of cases and deaths to 22,863 and 622 respectively, Dr.r Jean Kaseya, Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC), during an online briefing.
About 380,000 doses of MPOX vaccines have been pledged by Western partners such as the European Union and the United States, he said. That’s less than 15 percent of the doses authorities have said are needed to end the MPOX outbreaks in Congo, the epicentre of the ongoing global emergency.
After the outbreaks of mpox outside the African continent in 2022, rich countries quickly responded by providing vaccines and treatments from their reserves. However, only a few doses have reached Africa despite pleas from various governments.
At the earliest, the first batch of vaccine doses promised to Africa will arrive on 1er September, after delays caused by documentation and emergency authorization issues, D.r Kaseya.
This batch would include 50,000 doses promised by the American government and 15,000 from the GAVI vaccine alliance, said Dr.r Ngashi Ngongo, head of mpox at CACM.
“Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the U.S. government to transfer these vaccines,” he said.
Congo has also asked Japan for at least two million doses of vaccines that are particularly effective in protecting children. Negotiations are “quite advanced,” assured the Dr Ngongo.
The new variant of mpox first detected in Congo and blamed for the ongoing outbreaks is already triggering “significant” community-level transmission elsewhere, Ngongo said.
For example, in neighbouring Burundi, nearly 800 cases of MPOX were recorded last month, he said.
The CACM said it was working on a unified epidemic response plan that will be presented to African heads of state at a meeting in September.
So far, African countries are encouraging health measures and hygiene practices that would slow the spread of the mpox virus, Kaseya said.
Experts have warned, however, that such measures are difficult to implement in Congo, where millions of people fleeing violence are crammed into displacement camps amid a decade-long humanitarian crisis.
“Humanitarian actors are struggling to control the outbreak due to insufficient resources,” said Heather Kerr, director of the International Rescue Committee in Congo, adding that children are particularly vulnerable.