WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, Ahmed al-Mandhari, has repeatedly stated that “no one is safe until everyone is safe”.
This statement, which he has been keen to mention in many press conferences held by the regional office since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, underscores the importance of fair distribution of vaccines to eliminate the virus.
The World Health Organization may find itself obliged to make a similar call to address the unfair distribution of the monkeypox vaccine.
Moves by rich countries to buy large quantities of monkeypox vaccine while refusing to share doses with Africa could leave millions of people unprotected against a more dangerous version of the disease and risk continued spread of the virus to humans, the Associated Press cited public health officials as a warning in a report on Saturday.
Critics fear a repeat of the catastrophic inequality problems seen during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The mistakes we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic are now being repeated,” said Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Emory University.
While rich countries have ordered millions of vaccines to stop monkeypox within their borders, none have announced plans to share doses with Africa, where a more deadly form of monkeypox is spreading than in the West.
To date, there have been more than 22,000 reported cases of monkeypox in almost 80 countries since May, with about 75 suspected deaths in Africa, mostly in Nigeria and Congo.
On Friday, Brazil and Spain reported monkeypox-related deaths, the first reported outside Africa. Spain reported a second death from monkeypox on Saturday.
“African countries that have been dealing with monkeypox epidemics for decades have been relegated to a footnote in conversations about the global response,” Titanji said.
Scientists say that unlike campaigns to stop COVID-19, mass vaccinations against monkeypox will not be necessary.
They believe that targeted use of available doses, along with other measures, can stop the expanding epidemics, which have recently been designated by the WHO as a global health emergency.
Still, although monkeypox is much more difficult to spread than COVID-19, experts warn that if the disease spreads to general populations — currently in Europe and North America it circulates almost exclusively among gay and bisexual men — the need to vaccines may increase, especially if the virus takes hold in new regions.
On Thursday, the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for the continent to be a priority for vaccines, saying it has once again been left behind.
“If we are not safe, the rest of the world is not safe,” said the acting director of the Africa CDC, Ahmed Oguel.
Although monkeypox has been endemic in parts of Africa for decades, it has mostly passed to humans from infected wild animals and has generally not spread very far beyond the continent.
Experts suspect that the monkeypox epidemics in North America and Europe may have originated in Africa long before the disease began to spread sexually in two outbreaks in Spain and Belgium.
Currently, more than 70% of the world’s monkeypox cases are in Europe, and 98% are in men who have sex with men.
The Director of the Division of Universal Health Coverage, Communicable Diseases, at the WHO EMRO, Ivan Hutin, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the organization is working closely with member states and partners to establish a coordination mechanism to ensure that the most -a large number of countries have access to the vaccine.
The organization is also working with several member states that have larger stockpiles of vaccines to make some of their supplies more accessible to countries that do not have access to them.
He stressed that evaluating what is available and how these vaccines can be used to achieve optimal impact will take some time.
Meanwhile, he stressed the need to make every effort to control the spread of monkeypox among humans through early case detection, diagnosis, isolation and contact tracing.
Hutin further affirmed that information is a powerful tool that allows the most vulnerable to protect themselves and others.
Some countries have recently approved a monkeypox vaccine, but supply is still limited, while others have the old smallpox vaccine that can be used to treat the virus.
He pointed out that once vaccines are available, the WHO recommends targeted vaccination for those who have been exposed to people diagnosed with monkeypox.
It also calls for vaccinating people at high risk of exposure, including healthcare workers, some laboratory workers and those with multiple sexual partners.
He decreed the need for mass vaccination against monkeypox.
He confirmed that vaccination does not provide immediate protection against infection or disease, noting that the process can take several weeks.
This indicates that those who have been vaccinated should continue to take preventive measures, such as avoiding close contact, including having sex with other people, or with people at risk of contracting the virus.
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