Even though the World Health Organization is considering following Africa’s leading public health organization in naming the mpox outbreak an emergency, vaccines to help stem the outbreak may not reach the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighboring nations for months.
A WHO-led panel convenes on Wednesday to determine if the public health emergency of continental concern, which was declared by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday, poses a threat to the entire world.
Although experts had hoped that the meetings would spur global action, there are still many barriers to overcome, such as a shortage of vaccines, financial issues, and conflicting disease outbreaks.
The head of Congo’s Institut National pour la Recherche Biomedicale (INRB), Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, stated, “It is important to declare an emergency because the disease is spreading.” He expressed his hope that any proclamation will support increased financing for surveillance and promote Congo’s access to vaccines.
However, he admitted that there were challenges ahead in such a large country, where outbreaks of diseases like cholera and measles are already taxing health facilities and humanitarian resources.
Expert on mpox at the Institut Pasteur de Bangui in the Central African Republic Emmanuel Nakoune stated, “If the big declarations remain just words, it won’t make any material difference.”
The Africa CDC’s director general, Jean Kaseya, stated on Tuesday that there was a clear strategy to get 3 million doses of vaccine this year, without providing any other details.
The Africa CDC announced last week that it had received $10.4 million in emergency funds from the Africa Union for its mpox response.
Only 65,000 pills, according to sources involved in the preparation of a vaccination roll-out in Congo, were expected to be available in the near future, and campaigns were not expected to start before October at the latest.
According to Africa CDC, there have been over 15,000 probable cases of mpox across Africa this year, with 461 deaths—mostly among youngsters in the Congo—reported. The virus typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled sores, but it can sometimes be fatal.