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Africa, the only continent where monkeypox is endemic, has yet to receive vaccines against the virus as the infectious disease spreads around the world, the continent’s top health body said.
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Bloomberg news
Janice Kew
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(Bloomberg) — Africa, the only continent where monkeypox is endemic, has yet to receive vaccines against the virus as the infectious disease spreads around the world, the continent’s top health body said.
While the head of the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern over the weekend, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to get any dose of the inoculations, said Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy of the agency. director The WHO statement moves the outbreak to the highest level of alert, helping to marshal more resources globally to curb the outbreak.
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Ouma has previously said Africa should be first in line for monkeypox vaccines as it tries to avoid a repeat of its battle to secure shots at the start of the coronavirus pandemic which left the continent far behind the richest nations.
“Let’s focus on where we can really stop monkeypox at the source,” he said in an online briefing on Thursday. Endemic countries in Africa are the “best place to start,” he said.
Africa has dealt with monkeypox since the 1970s, with little international attention. In May, Ogwell Ouma said there had been several waves of the disease in the past two years that had simply been contained. The disease has spread to about 16,000 people in more than 70 countries since cases were reported in countries including the UK, US and Canada in May.
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Africa’s CDC is in talks with developers to get vaccinations “as soon as possible” for both smallpox and smallpox, Ouma said. Vaccines for the latter disease, which has been eradicated, can also be used against monkeypox.
Still, Africa faces at least six major disease outbreaks aside from Covid-19 and monkeypox, including Marburg virus, Lassa fever, cholera, measles and wild polio, putting strain on often limited resources.
The continent imports most of its vaccinations and the drive to establish a vaccine industry has stumbled. Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd., Africa’s largest pharmaceutical company, has yet to receive orders for its Covid-19 vaccine that it makes under license from Johnson & Johnson. With Covid-19, the inoculations, when they arrived it was difficult to convince people in Africa that they still needed them.
Aspen is available for “capacity fill opportunities” for monkeypox injections, the Durban, South Africa-based company said in a separate statement on Thursday.
(Updates with comments from the fourth paragraph)