The World Health Organization (WHO) has authorized a vaccine against the mpox (formerly called monkeypox), believing it to be an important step in the fight against a rapidly growing epidemic in Africa.
The approval of the vaccine from Danish manufacturer Bavarian Nordic means donors, such as UNICEF and the vaccine alliance Gavi, can buy doses and send them to Africa, where an outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo has led to thousands of cases.
But the vaccine supply is limited because there is only one manufacturer.
“This first [autorisation] “Developing a vaccine against MPOX is an important step in our fight against the disease, both in the context of the current outbreaks in Africa and in the future,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
He called for an “urgent” scale-up of vaccine procurement, donations and deployment where it is most needed, as well as other response measures.
Most cases are children under 15 years old
Wealthy countries in Europe and North America have authorized Bavarian Nordic’s smallpox vaccine for use during the global smallpox outbreak in 2022.
According to the WHO authorization, the vaccine can be administered to people aged 18 years and older, in a two-dose schedule.
Data on the vaccine’s effectiveness in children are limited, but the authorization states that the vaccine may be used in infants, children and adolescents “in the event of an outbreak, when the benefits of vaccination outweigh the potential risks.”
Officials at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said last month that nearly 70% of cases in Congo – the country hardest hit by smallpox – were among children under 15, who also accounted for 85% of deaths.
Overall, the WHO indicates that More than 120 countries have confirmed more than 103,000 cases of smallpox since the outbreak began two years ago.. Its latest count, dated Sunday, shows 723 people died of the disease in more than a dozen countries in Africa.
African experts have estimated that they might need about 10 million vaccines to stop the ongoing epidemics on the continent.
The European Union and several of its member states, as well as the United States and Bavarian Nordic, plan to donate 620,000 doses of the Bavarian Nordic vaccine, according to the WHO. Japan, for its part, plans to send 3 million doses of the LC16 vaccine.
But until last week, Congo, the worst-hit country, had received only about 250,000 doses.
On Thursday, the Africa CDC said 107 new deaths and 3,160 new cases had been recorded in the past week, a level that Dr. Jean Kaseya, the agency’s head, called “unacceptable.”
MPOX belongs to the same family of viruses as smallpox, but it causes less severe symptoms such as fever, chills and body aches.
People with more severe cases may develop lesions on the face, hands, chest and genitals.
