The United States will donate one million doses of the anti-Covid vaccine to countries on the African continent where the epidemic is raging, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday at the UN podium in New York.
“We must act quickly to combat the MPOS epidemic in Africa. We are ready to pledge $500 million to help African countries deal with this epidemic, and we are now donating one million doses of the MPOS vaccine,” he told the UN General Assembly.
“We call on our partners to follow us” for more promises of donations, he also said.
MPOX, formerly called monkeypox, is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans but is also transmitted between humans through prolonged physical contact, causing fever, muscle pain and skin lesions. It can sometimes be fatal.
The resurgence of MPOX on the continent and the appearance of a new variant (clade 1b) prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to trigger its highest level of global alert in mid-August.
The first vaccination campaign against MPOX began last week in Rwanda, according to the African Union’s health agency.
A total of 25,093 suspected cases of MPOX and 723 deaths had been reported across the continent between January and September 8, according to the WHO. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the epicentre of the outbreak, has said it will begin its vaccination campaign on October 2.
So far, some 200,000 doses of vaccine have been delivered to the DRC by the European Union, and about 50,000 by the United States. The DRC has a population of about 100 million.
The WHO announced on September 13 that it had prequalified the MVA-BN vaccine, allowing specialized UN agencies, such as the Vaccine Alliance and the children’s agency UNICEF, as well as governments to accelerate orders. The vaccine, manufactured by Bavaria Nordic A/S, can be administered to people over 18 years of age in two doses, four weeks apart.