The Democratic Republic of Congo, currently the epicentre of an Mpox outbreak, began a vaccination campaign against the virus on Saturday in the eastern city of Goma, according to AFP journalists.
The campaign, originally set to start on Wednesday, was delayed by three days due to logistical challenges in distributing the vaccines across the vast, infrastructure-poor country.
The first doses were given to hospital staff, with the wider vaccination programme set to begin targeting the general public from Monday in the eastern part of the country, where the outbreak began a year ago.
“As a doctor, I’m on the front line and in constant contact with those who are sick… I want to protect myself,” the first to be vaccinated, Jeannine Muhavi, told journalists.
Health workers and NGO staff had erected spacious tents for giving out the vaccines, displaying banners carrying the message: “mpox exists.”
The DRC has received 265,000 vaccine doses up to this point, which includes contributions from the United States and the European Union. However, it is still awaiting the arrival of millions of doses pledged by France, Japan, and the United States.
Since the beginning of the year, the nation has reported over 30,000 cases of smallpox, resulting in 988 fatalities, as stated by Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba. 70% of the fatalities have been among children under five.
“It will not be a mass vaccination campaign… the strategy is to vaccinate people most at risk,” Kamba told a press conference Friday in the capital, Kinshasa.
“As you can imagine, in a country of 100 million people, we’re not going to solve the problem with 265,000 doses.”
The vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is prioritising key groups, such as those with pre-existing health conditions and healthcare workers.
The current vaccine doses, produced by Danish pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic, are only approved for adults.
The DRC is also in talks with Japan to obtain more vaccines, which have been approved for both adults and children.
First discovered in monkeys used for research in Denmark in 1958, Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) was detected in humans for the first time in 1970 in the DRC. The virus causes symptoms like painful rashes, fever, body aches, and fatigue, and can be fatal in some cases.
Mpox has been found in 16 African countries this year, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). The virus gained international attention in May 2022 when a strain, clade 2b, spread globally, primarily affecting gay and bisexual men. In July 2022, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.