DR Congo mpox vaccination campagin to begin October 2

The vaccination campaign against mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo is to begin on October 2, the public health institute said Thursday, as the country registered more than 24,000 cases of the virus.

The campaign will last for ten days, Adelard Lofungola, the doctor heading the mpox response team, said at a press conference in Kinshasa.

“We will first focus on medical personnel, children, and key groups” such as sex workers, Lofungola said.

As well as logistical challenges facing the vaccination rollout, health authorities will also have to convince certain “communities to avoid self-medication”, he said.

The vaccine doses must be kept at a temperature of -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) and transported across a territory four times the size of France.

DRC is at the epicenter of the mpox outbreak and has recorded 24,035 cases and 789 deaths since January, according to official figures released Thursday.

The central African country has received 265,000 vaccine doses donated by the European Union and the United States, manufactured by the Danish laboratory Bavarian Nordic.

But the Bavarian Nordic vaccine is intended only for adults.

The foreign affairs ministry has said it signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Japan on Wednesday for the delivery of five million vaccines, which can be given to children.

“We hope that this vaccine for children will arrive” before October 2, Lofungola said, adding that the first two deaths had been reported recently in the relatively unaffected province of North Kivu in the east.

“A 14-day-old newborn and an 8-year-old child. The first case is a mother-to-child transmission, detected late,” he said, while saying that for now “the situation is under control at the local level”.

Several mpox epidemics are currently present in Africa, but the outbreak in DRC has become complicated with the appearance of the Clade 1b virus variant.

Specialists say it is difficult to assess how dangerous and contagious the new variant is.

In Africa, mpox is now present in at least 14 countries including Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

© 2024 AFP