The Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday received its first shipment of Mpox vaccines, which health officials hope will help curb an outbreak that has led the United Nations to declare a global public health emergency.
Congo is the epicenter of the epidemic, which has spread to neighboring countries and beyond, but a shortage of vaccines in Africa is hampering efforts to stop the deadly disease from spreading.
A plane carrying doses produced by Bavarian Nordic and donated by the European Union arrived in the capital, Kinshasa, at around 13:00 local time (12:00 GMT), Reuters correspondents at the airport said.
Congo’s Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba Mulamba told reporters that the new vaccine has already proven its usefulness in the United States and will also be made available to adults in Congo.
“We know which provinces are most affected, especially Equateur and South Kivu… Our aim is to stop the virus as quickly as possible,” he said.
Laurent Mushel, head of the EU’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), said the first delivery contained 99,000 doses and another delivery on Saturday would bring the total to 200,000.
In total, Europe aims to deliver 566,000 doses to wherever there is greatest need in the region, Mushel told Reuters. “Depending on the number of cases, the next country (for delivery) should be Burundi, but the country’s medical agency has to authorise it.”
The arrival of the vaccine in Congo should begin to address a major inequality that has left African countries without access to two shots used in the 2022 global ampox outbreak, while they were widely available in Europe and the United States.
Congo has said it will begin its vaccination campaign on October 8, to allow time for a massive awareness drive to overcome mistrust in some communities.
Ampox usually causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled sores and can be fatal. According to the health ministry, there were 19,710 suspected cases of ampox in Congo in the first eight months of this year. Of these, 5,041 were confirmed and 655 died.
It is spread through close contact, including sexual contact.
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