The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Friday that nearly one million doses of mpox vaccines have been allocated to nine African countries to curb rising infections. This distribution follows the launch of an Access and Allocation Mechanism (AAM) last month, aimed at ensuring equitable access to mpox vaccines across the continent.
“So far, more than 50,000 people have been vaccinated against mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, thanks to donations from the United States and the European Commission,” stated WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The announcement aligns with data from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), which reported a 500 percent increase in mpox cases from last year, now affecting 19 countries. WHO declared mpox a global health emergency in August, after the spread of a new variant, clade 1b, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to nearby nations.
“This is the first allocation of almost six million vaccine doses that we expect to be available by the end of 2024,” added Ghebreyesus, emphasizing that the 900,000-dose allocation targets regions with significant transmission of the new variant.
“This is an important step towards bringing the mpox outbreaks under control, as part of WHO and the Africa CDC’s shared strategic response plan,” he noted, while stressing that vaccination is only one part of the approach “alongside case finding, contact tracing, infection prevention and control, clinical care, risk communication, and testing.”
