WHO says almost a million mpox vaccines have been allocated to Africa

The World Health Organization on Friday said almost a million doses of mpox vaccines have been allocated to nine countries in Africa.

This follows the establishment last month of an Access and Allocation Mechanism (AAM) to support the equitable and timely access to mpox vaccines in Africa.

“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,” said WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The announcement comes as the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said mpox cases were showing a 500 per cent increase from last year, now impacting 19 countries.

The WHO declared mpox a global health emergency in mid-August, after a new strain, clade 1b,  began spreading from the Democratic Republic of Congo to neighbouring countries.

Ghebreyesus said this week, the allocation of some 900,000 doses of vaccine was based on public health need, especially those with significant transmission of the new variant.

The Director-General said this was the “the first allocation of almost six million vaccine doses that we expect to be available by the end of 2024”.

“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 said.

However, he said it was important to note that vaccination is only one part of the plan “alongside case finding, contact tracing, infection prevention and control, clinical care, risk communication, and testing”.