The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared a public health emergency over the spread of monkeypox on Tuesday, raising continental concern for the first time ever, and a World Health Organization-led committee meets on Wednesday to determine whether the disease poses a global threat.
Vaccines needed to help curb the escalating outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries could be delayed for months even as the World Health Organization considers declaring the outbreak a pandemic, as Africa’s top public health agency has done, experts say.
While experts had hoped the meetings would spur action around the world, many obstacles remain, including limited vaccine supplies, funding and disease outbreaks. “It is important to declare a state of emergency because the disease is spreading,” said Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, head of the Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research.
Tamfum said he hoped any announcement would help secure more funding for surveillance, as well as support for vaccine access in Congo. But he acknowledged that the road ahead was not easy in a huge country where health facilities and humanitarian funding are already strained by conflict and outbreaks of diseases such as measles and cholera.
“If big statements remain just words, it will not make any difference on the ground,” said Emmanuel Nakoni, a smallpox expert at the Pasteur Institute de Bangui in the Central African Republic.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week it had received $10.4 million in emergency funding from the African Union to tackle monkeypox, and director-general Jean Kasia said on Tuesday there was a clear plan to secure 3 million doses of the vaccine this year, without elaborating.
However, sources involved in planning the vaccination rollout in Congo said only 65,000 doses were likely to be available in the short term, and campaigns were unlikely to start before October at the earliest.
Regarding the spread of the epidemic, more than 15,000 suspected cases of smallpox have been recorded in Africa this year, with 461 deaths, most of them among children in the Congo, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(Reuters)
The viral infection is usually mild but can be deadly, causing flu-like symptoms. A new strain of the virus caused an outbreak in refugee camps in eastern Congo this year and has spread to Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Kenya for the first time. Ivory Coast and South Africa are also experiencing outbreaks linked to a different strain of the virus that spread globally in 2022, largely as a result of homosexual contact.
The outbreak prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency before ending it 10 months later. Two vaccines, Bavaria Nordic’s Genius and KM Biologics’ LC16, were subsequently used.
Beyond clinical trials, neither vaccine has ever been available in Congo or across Africa, where the disease has been endemic for decades. LC-16 has only been approved for use in children. Congo’s regulators approved the vaccines for domestic use in June, but the government has not formally requested anything from manufacturers or governments such as the United States, which is looking to make donations through the global vaccine pool, Gavi.