A scramble for monkeypox vaccines is underway, with 35 countries scrambling to access the 16.4 million doses that exist so far, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and the risk that low-income countries may miss out.
Meg Doherty, director of WHO’s Global Programs on HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections, said there was “quite a possible risk” that the countries bidding for the supplies would be high-income countries.
“We’ll have to be careful with that,” he said. “Our mantra has been and continues to be that we want equity. If WHO has to say it louder and louder for countries that don’t have access, we will continue to do so.
“We can’t have a response to monkeypox that only addresses the UK, Canada and the US. We need a response that also addresses what’s happening in the DRC right now; in Nigeria, where cases are increasing.”
Doherty was speaking at the international AIDS conference in Montreal, Canada, where Professor Chris Beyrer of Johns Hopkins University said on Friday that monkeypox was another preventable pandemic and that the warning signs were there five years ago years.
“It turns out that monkeypox emerged from its endemic area of central Africa in West Africa in 2017, five years ago, and this outbreak has been ongoing for five years with no urgency, no response, no commitment to the WHO with vaccines in these countries,” he added. said Beyrer, a member of an ongoing Lancet commission on health and human rights.
He added: “Now that it has gone from six endemic countries to 76 and is the new emerging threat to global health in the rich world, we have this sense of urgency.”
Doherty said discussions were imminent with Japan, where another vaccine had been developed, and that 100 million doses of smallpox vaccine also existed, but “this is probably the least likely vaccine that most countries want use at this time, because of the possible side-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 an estimated 60,000 people who are eligible in the city, said Marina Klein, director of chronic viral disease research at McGill. University
The latest WHO figures show nearly 20,000 cases of monkeypox in 78 countries and five deaths. The data shows that 98% of those affected are men who have sex with men, but there have been a small number of cases in women and a couple in children.