The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has asked Japan to donate at least 2 million doses of smallpox vaccine, a senior official at Africa’s top public health agency and a Congolese official said Tuesday.
The Japanese government said last week that Congo had requested doses of smallpox vaccine, but did not specify how many.
Ngashi Ngongo of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) told a briefing that the health agency understood that discussions with Japan were “quite advanced” and that Congo wanted the vaccine to protect children.
Congolese smallpox team leader Cris Kacita confirmed to Reuters that the central African country had asked Japan for more than 2 million doses of the vaccine.
MPOX is a potentially fatal infection that causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled sores and is spread through close physical contact.
The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency earlier this month after a new strain, known as clade Ib, spread from Congo to neighboring African countries.
Japan has a stockpile of the LC16 vaccine against MPOX, made by the Japanese company KM Biologics. The Danish company Bavarian Nordic makes another vaccine called Jynneos. The first smallpox vaccines could arrive in Africa in the first week of September, according to Africa CDC.
Several strains of smallpox are spreading simultaneously in Africa, but Congo is responsible for the vast majority of cases reported on the continent this year.
According to a presentation by Africa CDC on Tuesday, as of August 26, 13 African countries had reported more than 22,800 smallpox cases and 622 deaths in 2024, while 12 countries had reported more than 18,900 cases and 541 deaths a week earlier.
Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya told reporters that the African continent was not ready for another pandemic after being treated unfairly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the face of COVID, we had no vaccines, no medicines. We didn’t even have syringes, gloves, and we were abandoned. Today we are in a similar situation and we are starting to look for vaccines because we don’t manufacture them,” he said.
Kaseya said a preliminary report showed that only one African vaccine manufacturer, whose name was not revealed, had the capacity to manufacture Bavarian Nordic’s mpox vaccine, given adequate technology transfer.
