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Health authorities told AFP on Tuesday that the mpox vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been postponed, although the exact start date is unclear.
The Central African country, the epicenter of the latest outbreak, was due to administer the jab on October 2.
“We have no plans to start on the 2nd,” Dr. Nanu Yanga, a member of the health ministry’s expanded vaccination program, told AFP.
Yanga said vaccinations would also begin in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, despite the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressing concerns in September about the spread of the virus in the populous capital, Kinshasa.
“We are observing a rapid increase in cases in Kinshasa, which is of great concern to us,” Africa CDC Chief of Staff and Executive Director Dr. Ngasi Gongo said at an mpox briefing on September 26. ” he said.
Ngongo said the city’s crowding “makes a rapid spread of infection very likely” but declined to say how many people have been infected in Congo’s capital.
“We need to start the first phase of vaccination within a week,” the provincial health minister told AFP on Tuesday, as vaccine doses arrived in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on Monday.
“We now have to not only prepare and train people, but also deploy vaccines,” said doctor Theophil Warrika.
Yanga also said further preparations were needed before inoculations could begin, including deploying vaccines from storage locations.
The jab will be rolled out in Kinshasa in the coming days, and Yanga expects it to be launched within two to three weeks at the most.
On August 14, the World Health Organization declared an international state of emergency regarding mpox, citing concerns that a rapid increase in cases of the clade 1b strain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was spreading to neighboring countries.
The central African country received 265,000 doses of the vaccine made by Danish pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic, but only for adults.
The city of Kinshasa is in talks with Japan about possible supplies, where another mpox vaccine has been approved for use in adults and children.
Scientists discovered the disease, formerly known as monkeypox, in monkeys kept for research in Denmark in 1958, and it was first detected in humans in 1970 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Infection confirmed.
The virus, which causes fever, muscle aches, and large boil-like skin lesions, can be transmitted to humans through contaminated animals or to others through close physical contact. .
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