In the Democratic Republic of Congo, after the eastern provinces of the country, the mpox vaccination campaign began in Kinshasa, the capital, on November 7. However, this concerns, for the moment, only soldiers and prisoners, but not children who are the most vulnerable.
The Congolese authorities justify their decision by the lack of available vaccines and the fact that they first wanted to target what they call “closed environments”.
Targeted vaccination
Kinshasa’s prisons, as well as the Kokolo military camp, are priorities for the mpox vaccination campaign in the city-province of Kinshasa, said Dieudonné Mwamba, director general of the National Institute of Public Health, the organization responsible for coordinating the response to the mpox epidemic in the DRC.
He justified this decision by the insufficient number of doses allocated to the city of Kinshasa, priority having been given to the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, during the launch of the vaccination campaign. As a result, prisoners and military personnel were prioritized.
“In closed environments, the disease spreads quite quickly. This is why, beyond prisons which are closed environments, we have also taken military camps into account in our strategy. This is why we are currently also vaccinating at Kokolo camp,” explains Dieudonné Mwamba.
Children remain more vulnerable
But the charity Save the Children said on Wednesday (13.11.2024) that targeted vaccinations were needed to stop the rapid spread of the virus among children, who are almost four times more likely to die from the new strain of the virus. mpox than adults.
“In closed environments, the disease spreads quite quickly” (Dieudonné Mwamba)
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Cris Kacita, the head of operations for Congo’s monkeypox control program, said more than 160,000 doses were missing for a vaccination program in the Congolese capital.
Doctor Dieudonné Mwamba also pleaded for additional doses, in order to guarantee adequate vaccination coverage in the city of Kinshasa. “At this stage there is a need to have other doses to cover all the needs at the level of Kinshasa, especially since we are in the process of revisiting the vaccination plan, to see how to broaden the target at the level of Kinshasa and at the level of other provinces So there is a need for the vaccine at the level of Kinshasa and for the whole country obviously.explains the specialist.
More than two million doses of the mpox vaccine had been promised to the DRC, but at this stage only 265,000 doses had been delivered in September by the European Union and the United States.
Since the start of 2024, this country has recorded more than 42,000 cases of mpox and more than 1,000 deaths. The African Union Health Agency, the Africa CDC, however, affirms that the contamination curve has declined slightly in recent weeks.
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