More than 50,000 people have so far received the vaccine against Imbox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, the World Health Organization announced on Friday.
The African Union Health Authority warned on Thursday that the Imbox epidemic “is still out of control,” calling for mobilization to avoid a “pandemic more dangerous” than Covid-19.
Most of the deaths occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is considered the epicenter of the epidemic, and began a vaccination campaign in early October.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said – during a press conference in Geneva – that “more than 50,000 people have so far received the vaccine against Imbox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, thanks to donations from the United States and the European Commission.”
On the other hand, he stated that the World Health Organization and its partners have developed “an access and distribution mechanism to facilitate equitable and rapid access to vaccines against Imbox.”
Tedros explained that in this context, it was decided to distribute about 900,000 doses of the vaccine currently to 9 countries, and the concerned countries were informed today.
He added that it is “the first batch of about 6 million doses of vaccines that are supposed to be available by the end of 2024” through this mechanism, thanking the countries and partners that granted the vaccines: Canada, the United States, the European Union, 12 of its member states, and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance.
More than a thousand people have died as a result of Embox in Africa, where about 48,000 infections have been recorded since January, according to the African Union Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC-Africa).
Impox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a viral disease that is transmitted from animals to humans, but it is also transmitted between humans through physical contact. It causes fever, muscle pain, and skin ulcers, and can be fatal.
Tedros stated that “vaccination is only an element” in combating this disease, stressing that “although infection detection rates have increased significantly this year, tests are only conducted for 40 to 50% of suspicious cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”