Congo may be seeing a steady drop in the number of mpox cases, but more vaccines are still needed.
Some health experts say that the number of mpox cases in Congo seems to be “stabilizing.” This could mean that the epidemic is going away.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that Congo has been reporting between 200 and 300 lab-confirmed cases of mpox every week. In July, there were almost 400 cases a week.
The drop can also be seen in Kamituga, a mining city in the eastern part of Congo where the new, more contagious form of mpox first showed up.
But on Friday, the UN health agency admitted that only 40% to 50% of potential infections in Congo were being tested. They also said that the virus is still spreading in some parts of the country and other places, like Uganda.
Doctors are glad that the number of infections has gone down in some parts of Congo, but they still don’t know what kind of physical touch is causing the spread.
Not many shots were given out.
Health experts are also upset that the central African country has only gotten 265,000 doses of the vaccine. They say it’s hard to get the vaccine to all the places it needs to go in such a big country.
WHO says that 50,000 people in Congo, which has 110 million people, have been immunized.
Scientists also say that the whole continent needs to be vaccinated right away to stop the spread of mpox and stop more worrying genetic changes like the one found in Congo earlier this year after months of low-level circulation.
“If we miss this chance, there is a much greater chance of another major outbreak,” said Dr. Zakary Rhissa, who runs operations for the organization Alima in Congo.
About 43,000 cases have been suspected so far this year in Africa, and more than 1,000 people have died, mostly in Congo.
“We’ve seen how past outbreaks, such as the one in Nigeria in 2017, can lead to larger global events if not effectively contained,” he noted.
The 2017 plague led to the global mpox outbreak in 2022, which spread to more than 100 countries.
Rhissa said that the drop in cases in Kamituga, where mpox first spread among sex workers and miners, gives them a chance to start more programs for education, vaccination, and monitoring.
The 18-year-old sex worker Georgette Hamuli didn’t know about mpox until last week, when immunization teams came to the poor area where she works in Goma, which is the biggest city in eastern Congo.
“They told us we have a high chance of getting an infection,” she said. Our clients are required to use condoms, but some refuse. If they don’t want to use one, they pay twice as much.
Hamuli said that a charity gave her and some sex workers friends 2,000 Congolese francs ($0.70) each to get vaccinated against mpox. But it wasn’t the money that made her change her mind.
“The shot is also important,” she said. “I think we’re now protected.”
“A public health approach is what we need.”
To stop the virus, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that Congo needs at least 3 million mpox medicines and the rest of Africa needs another 7 million.
WHO and its partners have given 900,000 vaccines to nine African countries that have mpox. By the end of the year, they hope to have distributed 6 million doses.
Congo was the source of mumps outbreaks in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Travelers from Congo have also been found to have contracted the disease in Sweden, Thailand, Germany, India, and Britain.
Heather Kerr, who is in charge of Congo for the International Rescue Committee, says that less than half of the most vulnerable people in the country have been vaccine.
“We don’t have any vaccines for kids and only a few for adults,” she said.
Most of Congo’s vaccines come from funding countries like the US and UNICEF. The shots are mostly bought with money from taxpayers.
The head of the Global Health Institute at Duke University, Dr. Chris Beyrer, said, “We’re getting a charitable approach where we only see very small donations of vaccines to Africa.”
“What we need is a public health approach where we immunize populations at scale” .
Bavarian Nordic, a drug company that makes the most popular mpox vaccine, said it would sell shots to Africa for as little money as possible.
A study by the advocacy group Public Citizen showed that UNICEF spent $65 (€60) for each dose of the Bavarian Nordic Jynneos mpox vaccine. This is a lot more than most other vaccines used in public health programs.
Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, an infectious diseases expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, said that because of how the virus spreads, mpox outbreaks usually rise and then go away quickly.
This time, though, he said there are two things that make things more difficult: the virus can be spread through sex, and sick animals are still spreading it.
“This is new ground for us with mpox,” he said. “But we won’t be able to solve this problem until most of our people get vaccinated.”
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