mpox vaccines

October 10, 2024 3:19 PM

Countries donate mpox vaccines to combat outbreak in Africa

Some countries have pledged to donate doses of mpox vaccines to combat an outbreak of the disease in Africa after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global public health emergency in August for the second time in two years. Such donations are meant to address the huge inequity that left African nations with no access to the shots used during the global outbreak in 2022. The Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicentre of the current outbreak, launched its first mpox vaccination c...

August 26, 2024 5:00 PM

Germany to donate 100,000 mpox vaccine doses to combat outbreak in Africa

Germany will donate 100,000 mpox vaccine doses from its military stocks to help contain the outbreak on the African continent in the short term as well as provide help to the affected countries, said a government spokesperson on Monday. The government will provide the World Health Organization with flexible financial resources via various instruments to combat mpox and also support its partners in Africa through the GAVI vaccination alliance, added the spokesperson. Germany has around 117,000 ...

August 24, 2024 4:06 PM

Why mpox vaccines are only just arriving in Africa after two years

The first 10,000 mpox vaccines are finally due to arrive next week in Africa, where a dangerous new strain of the virus - which has afflicted people there for decades - has caused global alarm. The slow arrival of the shots – which have already been made available in more than 70 countries outside Africa - showed that lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic about global healthcare inequities have been slow to bring change, half a dozen public health officials and scientists said. Among th...

August 23, 2024 5:10 PM

WHO says partners can start talks to buy mpox vaccines before their approval

The World Health Organization said on Friday its partners like Gavi and Unicef can start buying mpox vaccines before they are approved in a bid to get inoculations to Africa faster as the continent battles an escalating outbreak of the virus. Traditionally, organisations like Gavi, which helps lower-income countries buy vaccines, can only start purchasing shots once they have approval from the WHO. But the rules have been relaxed in this instance to get talks moving, as the WHO's approval is du...