Despite Availability, Africa Can’t Access Vaccine Doses Needed to Contain Mpox Spread

The outbreaks throughout the DRC have been exacerbated by armed conflict in the eastern part of the country, where inhabitants of refugee camps have been particularly susceptible to the disease. As the country, as well as others on the continent, scrambles to contain the spread of Mpox, the biggest issue is a serious dearth of vaccines.

During a press briefing declaring Mpox a continental public health emergency, Director General of the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Jean Kaseya, said the public health body will secure 3 million vaccines by the end of the year, but there’s skepticism, with experts saying that it may take months for the first batch of vaccines to arrive in Congo and other African countries.

“3 million is not enough to cover [large] populations,” health journalist and social worker Zubaida Baba Ibrahim tells OkayAfrica. Just this week, Nigeria received 10,000 Mpox vaccine doses and Ibrahim is unenthusiastic about the impact this will have on a country with a reported population of over 200 million people. She also wonders why the vaccine reached Nigeria first, rather than Congo, where it’s clearly more needed.

The doses, the first set to reach Africa since the disease was declared a global public health emergency, were donated by the American government, and the Nigerian authorities said the process to secure the vaccines started months ago. The donation can only vaccinate 5,000 people. Nigeria has recorded 40 confirmed cases and zero deaths. Meanwhile, the DRC government is unsure of when vaccine doses will reach its shores as its death toll climbs.

The current situation has brought the conversation about global vaccine inequality back into focus, not too long after the “vaccine apartheid” chatter around COVID-19 vaccines. When the World Health Organization declared Mpox a global health emergency in 2022 after it spread to Asia, Latin America and parts of North America, it was reported that richer countries had built stockpiles of the vaccines. The U.S. alone had about 20 million doses in storage, however, it couldn’t effectively deal with the outbreak because most of the doses expired while in storage.

So far, no African country has developed its own stockpile of Mpox vaccines, which means there’s an over-reliance on external aid to deal with this ongoing emergency. While several countries have signified their readiness to donate vaccines, there’s a lot of red tape in relation to the meticulous methods the WHO employs in certifying vaccines ready for use in different countries.

Although readily available, the Mpox vaccines were approved by the U.S. and European health bodies. Without its own testing body, the DRC — as with other African countries — is relying on the WHO to determine that the vaccines being donated are safe and effective. This testing process could take years, however, this ongoing spread could lead to an emergency use license.

“The simple solution is Africa producing its own vaccines,” Ibrahim, who recently wrote a piece on Africa’s continued wait for Mpox vaccines, tells OkayAfrica. It sounds idealistic but it’s the best long-term solution to ensure better preparedness for future, similar situations.

“We need to wake up and start developing vaccines,” Ibrahim says. “Why do we need to wait for vaccines from Europe and North America? It doesn’t really make sense.”