DR Congo expects first shipment of mpox vaccines to arrive on Thursday

The country hopes to begin vaccinations on October 8 but faces huge logistical challenges.

The first shipment of nearly 100,000 doses of mpox vaccines is expected to arrive in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Thursday.

The Central African country of about 100 million people is at the epicentre of an mpox outbreak that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health emergency last month.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed the doses, manufactured by Bavarian Nordic and donated by the European Union, were due to arrive on Thursday.

Cris Kacita, head of DRC’s mpox outbreak response chief, earlier told the Reuters news agency about the planned shipments.

“We’ll receive the first batch on Sept 5 and a second one on Sept 7,” Kacita said in a WhatsApp message, without giving further details on the number of doses or the provider.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said more than 99,000 doses were due to arrive on Thursday, with the flight from Denmark expected to land at Kinshasa’s international airport at 11:00 GMT.

Another flight carrying a similar number is scheduled to arrive before the end of the week.

More than 17,500 mpox cases and 629 deaths have been reported in the DRC since the start of the year, according to the WHO.

UNICEF says children in the DRC and neighbouring countries are most vulnerable to the virus.

“We are in a health war against mpox. To face this disease, we need you,” Congolese Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said on X on Tuesday.

Mpox has now been reported in at least 13 African countries, according to an August 27 update from Africa CDC.

On Wednesday, Guinea said it had recorded its first confirmed case of the disease.

The virus has also been detected in Pakistan, the Philippines, Sweden and Thailand.

Other countries have also promised to send vaccine doses to African nations.

Cris Kacita, head of the DRC’s mpox outbreak response chief, said the country hoped to start the first wave of vaccination on October 8 if the vaccines were delivered this week.

Health authorities face serious logistical challenges with the vaccination campaign, partly because the doses must be kept at -90 degrees Celsius (-130 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The vaccine will not be distributed as soon as it is received,” Kacita said, explaining why it would take about a month from delivery to launch the campaign.

The WHO’s acting director of epidemic and pandemic prevention, Maria Van Kerkhove, said the first people to receive the vaccination were likely to be contacts of known cases.

The WHO declared an emergency on August 14 because of a surge in cases of the new clade 1b strain.

Both the strains – clade 1b and clade 1a – are present in the DRC.

Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research. It was first discovered in humans in 1970.

Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.

The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions filled with pus.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies