“Half a million vaccines ready” –

“There are currently about half a million doses in stock” of the Mpox vaccine “that can be purchased by countries or other entities. Another 2.4 million could be produced by the end of this year if requested”. And “another 10 million doses could be produced by 2025, but there needs to be a firm request” for supplies to “plan the production of these vaccines”. This was explained by Tim Nguyen, head of the High Impact Events Preparedness Unit of the World Health Organization (WHO), taking stock of what concerns the Mva-Bn vaccine by Bavarian Nordic. Work is also underway, the expert explained on the day the WHO announced the declaration of a public health emergency of international concern for Mpox, on “a donation program for those countries that have stocks of the vaccine” and could “donate them to countries in need. We are building this donation program in order to understand where to best use them when resources are scarce and to have the greatest impact on public health”. And then there is the LC-16 vaccine: “This is a very special vaccine, it is not commercialized but currently produced on behalf of the Japanese government. In previous incidents the Japanese government has been very generous when asked to donate the vaccine to countries,” the expert concluded.

But what is the WHO warning about? The rapid spread of Mpox, monkeypox, in African countries constitutes a global health emergency. The World Health Organization has declared it. This is the second time in three years that the WHO has designated an Mpox outbreak as a global emergency. It previously did so in July 2022. The outbreak has affected nearly 100,000 people, mostly gay and bisexual men, in 116 countries and has killed about 200 people, the New York Times reports. The threat this time is more lethal. Since the beginning of this year, the Democratic Republic of Congo alone has reported more than 14,000 cases of Mpox and 524 deaths. Among those most at risk are women and children under 15. “The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, its detection in neighbouring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very concerning,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.