Vaccines to help curb an escalating mpox outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbouring countries may still not reach the central African country for months even as the World Health Organization considers following Africa’s top public health agency in declaring the outbreak an emergency.
On Tuesday, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared a public health emergency of continental concern for the first time ever, and on Wednesday, a WHO-led panel meets to decide if it represents a global threat.
But while experts hoped the meetings would galvanise action worldwide, many obstacles remain, including limited vaccine supply, funding and competing disease outbreaks.
“It is important to declare an emergency because the disease is spreading,” said Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, head of Congo’s Institut National pour la Recherche Biomedicale (INRB). He said he hoped any declaration would help provide more funding for surveillance as well as supporting access to vaccines in Congo.
But he acknowledged the road ahead was not easy in a huge country where health facilities and humanitarian funds are already stretched by conflict and outbreaks of diseases like measles and cholera.
“If the big declarations remain just words, it won’t make any material difference,” said Emmanuel Nakoune, an mpox expert at the Institut Pasteur de Bangui in Central African Republic.
Africa CDC said last week it had been granted $10.4 million in emergency funding from the Africa Union for its mpox response, and its director general Jean Kaseya said on Tuesday there was a clear plan to secure 3 million doses of vaccine this year, without elaborating further.
