Rwanda begins vaccinations against mpox amid a call for more doses for Africa

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Rwanda has started a vaccination campaign against mpox with 1,000 doses of the vaccine it obtained from Nigeria under an agreement between the two countries, the African health agency said Thursday.

The vaccinations started Tuesday targeting seven districts with “high risk populations” who neighbor Congo, Dr. Nicaise Ndembi from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said. Nigeria donated the 1,000 doses to Rwanda from an allotment of 10,000 it had received from the United States.

Congo has been at t he epicenter of an outbreak on the African continent, where 2,912 new mpox cases and 14 new deaths have been recorded in the last one week, bringing the total number of cases to 6,105 with 738 deaths since the beginning of the year.

“This outbreak must be stopped very quickly,” Africa CDC director-general Dr. Jean Kaseya said Thursday.

Rwanda and other countries are now requesting more doses than they originally indicated that they needed, Kaseya said. African experts have estimated the continent might need about 10 million vaccines to stop the ongoing outbreaks.

The Japanese government has signed an agreement with the government in Congo to provide 3 million doses of the mpox vaccine.

The World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Thursday urged more countries to contribute to the response.

“International collaboration and support are needed to stop the spread of the virus,” he wrote on X social media platform.

Congo is expected to start its vaccination campaign in the first week of October. Some 165,000 doses have so far been delivered to Congo, with hundreds of thousands more pledged by European countries.

“We also need this vaccine to start to be manufactured in Africa, and we are working strongly and closely with our manufacturers and also our partners to have these vaccines manufactured from one of the African countries,” Kaseya said.

WHO said Friday it had granted its first authorization for use of a vaccine against mpox in adults, calling it an important step toward fighting the disease in Africa.

The approval of the vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic A/S means that donors like vaccines alliance Gavi and UNICEF can buy it. But supplies are limited because there’s only a single manufacturer.