First shipment of mpox vaccines arrives in Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo received its first shipment of mpox vaccines today, three weeks after the UN declared a public health emergency over the spread of a new, dangerous strain of the virus formerly known as monkeypox.

A plane carrying 99,000 doses of the Bavarian Nordic jabs, donated by the European Union, landed in the Central African country’s capital, Kinshasa, at 1pm local time today, Reuters reported.

The EU aims to deliver 566,000 doses in total, and an extra 200,000 doses are due to arrive as soon as Saturday, according to European health authorities.

Congolese health authorities have said they will need around 3.5 million doses in total to protect its population.

More than 22,800 mpox cases and 650 deaths have been reported in Africa since the beginning of the year, the majority of which are in the DRC, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Multiple strains of mpox, including a newly detected variant known as clade 1b, are in circulation at once.

Clade 1b, first reported in South Kivu, DRC last September has rapidly spread to neighbouring countries, including Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, and cases have also been detected in travellers from the DRC in Thailand and Sweden.

Congo has said it will launch its vaccination campaign in the second week of October, to allow time for a thorough education campaign to overcome vaccine mistrust in some communities.