NAIROBI: Africa still does not have a single dose of the monkeypox vaccine, despite being the only continent to have documented deaths from the disease, which was recently declared a global emergency, the public health agency said on Thursday. “Let’s put vaccines on the continent,” said the acting head of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ahmed Oguel, at a weekly media briefing. He described a situation where the African continent of 1.3 billion people is again falling behind in access to doses in an embarrassing echo of the Covid-19 pandemic. Less than a week ago, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox an “emergency” that qualifies as a global emergency. To date, more than 20,000 cases have been reported in 77 countries. More than 2,100 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 11 African countries and 75 people have died, the CDC’s Africa director said. Although monkeypox has been established in parts of central and west Africa for decades, it was not known to cause large outbreaks outside the continent or spread widely among humans until May, when authorities discovered dozens of outbreaks in Europe, North America and elsewhere. Now begins the global race to obtain doses of the monkeypox vaccine. The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, ensured the purchase of 160,000 doses of vaccines against the disease. US health regulators said on Wednesday that nearly 800,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine would soon be available for distribution after what they described as weeks of delays. Such delays are much more pronounced on the African continent, where the painful disease has been endemic in some countries for years. Oguel said the African CDC has engaged with international partners in trying to get vaccines, and while he said “good news” is expected in the coming days, “we can’t give you a timeline.” Even doses of the smallpox vaccine, which has shown effectiveness against monkeypox, are not available in Africa, Oguel said. “Solutions must be global in nature,” he said in a warning to the international community. “If we are not safe, the rest of the world is not safe.” The COVID-19 pandemic and the global stockpile of vaccine doses was a blow to African leaders, who quickly joined in an unprecedented effort to obtain doses and create production of more vaccines on the continent. Now, to their dismay, the monkeypox epidemic shows once again how the wealthier countries of the world are rushing to protect their people first. The WHO has said it is creating a mechanism to share vaccines to protect against monkeypox, but the organization has released few details, so there is no guarantee African countries will get priority. No country has yet agreed to share vaccines with the WHO. WHO officials emphasized that monkeypox can infect anyone who is in close contact with a patient or with their contaminated clothing or sheets. Researchers are still studying how it spreads, but they think it’s mainly through close skin-to-skin contact and through contact with bedding and clothing that has touched the rash or body fluids of an infected person. In Africa, monkeypox is mainly spread to humans through infected wild animals such as rodents in limited outbreaks that usually do not cross borders. In Europe, North America and elsewhere, however, monkeypox is spreading among humans without contact with animals or recent travel to Africa. IN USA. and Europe, the majority of infections have occurred in men who have sex with men, although health officials have stressed that anyone can contract the virus.
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