Western nations holding stockpiles of mpox vaccines have been urged to donate them to regions experiencing a rapid spread of a more dangerous strain of the virus.
The World Health Organization has declared the mpox surge a public health emergency of international concern - its highest alert level - with Clade 1b cases soaring in the Democratic Republic of Congo and spreading beyond its borders.
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, as the African Union champion on pandemic response, said it was time to "correct the unfair treatment" of Africa in vaccine distribution, drawing parallels to the Covid-19 pandemic that saw African countries among the last to roll out vaccines.
"I urge the international community, partners, and organisations to mobilise stockpiles of vaccines and other medical countermeasures for deployment in Africa," he said in a statement on Saturday.
Confirmed cases
The WHO has already asked countries with mpox vaccine stockpiles to donate them to countries with ongoing outbreaks.
"This PHEIC (public health emergency) must be different and correct the unfair treatment from the previous one declared in 2022, where vaccines and therapeutics were developed and made available primarily to Western countries," Ramaphosa added.
A total of 18,737 suspected or confirmed cases of mpox were reported in Africa since the beginning of the year, including 1,200 cases in one week alone, the African CDC said Saturday.
The first cases of the mpox outside of Africa were recorded this week, in Sweden and Pakistan.
The United States has said it will donate 50,000 doses of an mpox vaccine to Democratic Republic of Congo and France said it would also send vaccines to risk countries.
Greatest potential
A German infection expert on Friday called for existing mpox vaccine supplies to be shipped to Africa, where they would have the greatest potential to tackle the disease
"The vaccines that are available globally are urgently needed in Africa, urgently needed in regions where the virus is currently spreading ... so that the people at risk there can build immunity," Leif Erik Sander, a professor and head of infectious disease at Charite, Germany’s larg est university hospital, told Reuters.
Mpox is a viral disease that can spread from animals to humans, but also human-to-human through sexual or close physical contact. Symptoms include fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
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