AFRICA – Some countries have pledged to donate doses of mpox vaccines to combat an outbreak of the disease in Africa, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global public health emergency in August for the second time in two years.

Such donations are meant to address the huge inequity that left African nations with no access to the shots used during the global outbreak in 2022.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicentre of the current outbreak, launched its first mpox vaccination campaign on Oct. 5. Canada will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses, a government spokesperson said on Sep. 12. The number of doses to be donated depends on the receiving countries’ capacity for storage and administration. France will donate 100,000 doses based on “locally identified needs”, its health ministry said on the Q&A section, opens new tab of its website, last updated on Sept. 16. Germany will donate 100,000 doses from its military stocks to help contain the outbreak in the short term, a government spokesperson said on Aug. 26. Japan has pledged to donate 3 million doses of KM Biologics’ LC16 vaccine, the largest number of doses pledged to date, the WHO said on Sep. 13, opens new tab.  U.S. President Joe Biden pledged in September that the U.S. would donate 1 million doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine and at least $500 million to African countries, to support their response to the outbreak. The U.S. State Department said, opens new tab on Sept. 24 it had delivered 10,000 doses to Nigeria and 50,000 doses to Congo, with further 300,000 doses ready to be disbursed in coordination with Gavi and WHO. The EU and its member states are donating at least 566,500 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine to African countries, including more than 215,000 doses donated by the bloc’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) in cooperation with the Danish vaccine maker. (Reuters) …[+]