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African countries could start vaccinating against mpox as early as next week, the continent’s top health body said, days after the World Health Organization declared the viral disease a global health emergency.
Previously, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the region had just 200,000 of the more than 10 million doses it needs to control the outbreak of the new more deadly strain of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox.
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Experts fear rich nations will hoard mpox shots
Africa presently doesn’t have as many mpox shots as it needs. As with COVID-19 vaccines, those for mpox “are in the hands of the world’s richest countries and companies,” wrote experts at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University in The New York Times. They warn that the detection of the new mpox strain in Sweden last week, the first case outside Africa, could trigger “a temptation for rich countries to start hoarding mpox vaccine stocks for their own populations,” arguing that “this must be avoided at all costs.”
Africa historically dependent on vaccine imports
The African continent has long relied on imports from wealthy nations to supply its vaccines, with nations receiving up to 99% of their inoculations from other countries. That could soon change, thanks to a recent African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) pact, vaccine alliance Gavi noted. Despite accounting for 20% of the global population, Africa’s vaccine industry provides just 0.2% of global supply — but that could increase following the enactment of AfCFTA and investments that will boost vaccine innovation on the continent.
Mpox unlikely to become next COVID-19 — but will hit Africa harder
Nations are prepared to deal with mpox outbreaks as they happen, and experts have said it’s unlikely that the disease will become a pandemic in the same way that COVID-19 did four years ago. But mpox is under-studied, Ore Ogunbiyi, Africa correspondent for The Economist, told the paper’s Intelligence podcast. At an international level, nations are taking the right steps to combat the disease, Ogunbiyi said — but “we’re back in this position where diseases that only affect poor countries,” like mpox, “don’t start mattering until they also affect rich countries and hit Europe.” As long as that attitude remains prevalent, she added, the continent will face challenges managing deadly infectious diseases.