The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has received its first batch of mpox vaccines, a critical development in the fight against an outbreak that has led the United Nations to declare a global public health emergency.
The Central African nation, home to approximately 100 million people, is at the center of this outbreak, which the World Health Organization (WHO) labeled a global public health emergency last month.
The initial shipment of vaccines, provided by the European Union, arrived in Kinshasa at around 1 p.m. local time (12:00 GMT) on a plane carrying 99,000 doses. A subsequent delivery scheduled for Saturday will bring the total to 200,000 doses, according to Laurent Muschel, the head of the EU Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). In total, Europe plans to supply 566,000 doses to areas with the greatest need, Muschel added.
Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba Mulamba announced that the vaccines, produced by Danish pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic, have already demonstrated their efficacy in the United States. These vaccines, approved in Europe and the U.S., are intended solely for adults, with ongoing trials assessing their use for children over 12. The first phase of the vaccination campaign in the DRC is tentatively set to begin on October 8, contingent on the timely arrival of additional doses.
The DRC faces significant logistical challenges in deploying the vaccine across its vast territory, which is four times the size of France and plagued by poor infrastructure and unreliable power supplies. The vaccines must be stored at minus 20°C (minus 4°F), requiring special storage conditions that add to the complexity of distribution.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, has been reported in at least 13 African countries. As of August 27, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) reported over 17,500 cases and 629 deaths in the DRC alone, with both clade 1b and clade 1a strains present. Guinea has recently confirmed its first case of mpox, and other nations have pledged to provide vaccine doses to affected regions.
The WHO declared a global emergency on August 14 due to a surge in cases of the new clade 1b strain of the virus, which was first identified in humans in 1970, following its discovery in monkeys in Denmark in 1958.
Muschel highlighted the solidarity demonstrated by the European Union in responding swiftly to the crisis, underscoring the capacity for rapid and coordinated international support.
