Mpox vaccination drive delayed in DR Congo

The mpox vaccination campaign in Democratic Republic of Congo has been pushed back, health authorities told AFP on Tuesday, with the exact start date unclear.

Jabs were set to be rolled out on October 2 in the central African country, the epicenter of the latest outbreak.

“We don’t plan to start on the 2nd,” doctor Nanou Yanga, a member of the health ministry’s Expanded Vaccination Program, told AFP.

Vaccinations will begin in eastern DRC, according to Yanga, despite the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention having voiced concern in September about the spread of the virus in the highly populated capital city of Kinshasa.

“We have observed a rapid increase of cases in Kinshasa—that is something that worries us very much,” doctor Ngashi Ngongo, Africa CDC chief of staff and head of the executive office, said at a mpox briefing on September 26.

Ngongo said that crowding in the city “makes it very prone for a rapid expansion”, but did not specify the number of cases in the Congolese capital.

Vaccine doses arrived in Bukavu, the capital of the South Kivu province in eastern DRC on Monday, “which obliges us to launch the first phase of vaccination in a week”, the provincial health minister told AFP on Tuesday.

“We must now prepare people and train them, but also deploy the vaccines,” doctor Theophile Walulika said.

Yanga also cited the need for further preparation before inoculation can begin, including vaccine deployment from storage sites.

Jabs will be introduced later in Kinshasa, with Yanga estimating a launch in two to three weeks at most.

The World Health Organization on August 14 declared an international emergency over mpox, citing concern over the surge in Clade 1b strain cases in the DRC that has spread to nearby countries.

The central African country has received 265,000 doses of a vaccine manufactured by Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, though only intended for adults.

Kinshasa is in talks with Japan, where another mpox vaccine used on adults and children has been approved, for a possible supply.

Scientists discovered the disease, which was formerly called monkeypox, in 1958 in Denmark among monkeys kept for research, and first spotted it in humans in 1970 in what is now DRC.

The virus, which causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, can infect humans through contaminated animals or other humans through close physical contact.

© 2024 AFP