A race for monkeypox vaccines is underway, with 35 countries fighting to access the 16.4 million doses that exist so far, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and low-income countries risk losing out.
Meg Doherty, director of the WHO’s Global Programs on HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections, said there was a “quite possible risk” that countries bidding for supplies would be high-income countries.
“We’ll have to be careful about that,” she said. “Our mantra has been and continues to be that we want justice. If WHO has to say this louder and louder about those countries that are not getting access, we will continue to do so.
“We cannot have a response to monkeypox that only responds to the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States. We need an answer that also addresses what is happening in the DRC right now; in Nigeria, where cases are on the rise.”
Dougherty was speaking at the international AIDS conference in Montreal, Canada, where Prof. Chris Byrer of Johns Hopkins University said on Friday that monkeypox was another preventable pandemic and the warning signs were there five years ago.
“It turns out that monkeypox came out of its central African endemic area in West Africa in 2017, five years ago, and this outbreak has been going on for five years with no urgency, no response, no WHO engagement around vaccines in those countries,” said Behrer, a member of the Lancet’s current committee on health and human rights.
He added: “Now that it has gone from six endemic countries to 76 and is the new emerging global health threat in the rich world, we have this sense of urgency.”
Dougherty said discussions are underway with Japan, where another vaccine has been developed and that 100 million doses of smallpox vaccine also exist, but “it’s probably the least likely vaccine that most countries want to use at this point because of potential side effects effects. -effects”.
Vaccinating everyone who needs it will take a long time. In Montreal, only a third of the most at-risk population, men who have sex with men, have been vaccinated — 20,000 doses out of 60,000 people believed to be eligible in the city, said Marina Klein, research director of chronic viral diseases at McGill University.
The latest WHO figures show nearly 20,000 cases of monkeypox in 78 countries and five deaths. Data shows that 98% of those affected are men who have sex with men, but there are a small number of cases in women and a couple in children.
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