By Blessing Chinagorom
The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that the Democratic Republic of Congo remains epicenter of monkey pox with 629 fatalities and over 18,000 suspected cases were reported.
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedro Ghebreyesus who disclosed this in a Press Briefing on Friday said number of reported cases of clade 1b has been rising rapidly for several weeks, stating that, relatively few deaths have been reported in recent weeks.
He revealed further the 18,000 suspected cases includes more than 5000 cases and 31 deaths from the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, where the new clade 1b strain has been spreading.
Ghebreyesus added that 258 cases of clade 1b have been confirmed in Burundi, four in Rwanda, 4 in Uganda, 2 in Kenya and 1 each in Sweden and Thailand while the Agency also remain concerned about outbreaks of clade 1a in other parts of DRC.
The WHO DG who just returned from Congo where he had the honour to meet with the President Félix Tshisekedi to discuss the outbreaks and thanked him in response to the outbreaks, demonstrated by the govt’s commitment of US$ 10 to the response.
He also had the opportunity to meet with the United Nations Country Team, where they discussed coordination of mpox response among UN agencies, under the government’s leadership and critical importance of clear communication with people at risk of mpox, and strong engagement with communities and local partners.
According to him, “I also met with global and local health partners to discuss scaling up routine immunization for other diseases, including polio, measles and malaria, and mobilizing frontline polio workers to support the mpox response. WHO is working to accelerate access to, and delivery of, vaccines.
“The manufacturers of the two vaccines submitted their applications for emergency use listing last Friday, 23rd of August, and we’re working to review those applications as fast as possible. The safety and efficacy of vaccines are our highest priority. We will not take short cuts.
“The two main buyers of vaccines for low-income countries, Gavi and UNICEF, require WHO emergency use listing to buy vaccines for use in countries that have not issued their own national regulatory approval.
“Last week, I gave Gavi and UNICEF the green light to proceed with procuring vaccines, in parallel with the EUL process. However, WHO emergency use listing is not a barrier to vaccines being deployed in DRC.
“DRC’s medicines regulator approved both vaccines in June of this year, and the govt has requested bilateral donations of vaccine from high-income countries with large stockpiles. Together with the Africa CDC, WHO has also helped to secure donations from the European Union and some of its Member States”, he explained.
Ghebreyesus made it known that WHO is working with the Africa CDC, GAVI, UNICEF, CEPI and HERA to set up a coordination mechanism to allocate the donated vaccines and increase access in affected countries.
He said, “Yesterday, we also invited manufacturers of mpox diagnostics to submit an expression of interest for emergency use listing. Today we have received the first expression of interest.
“Over the past two days we have also convened a meeting of researchers to identify research priorities, and to foster a coordinated and collaborative approach to the development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics”.
He noted that it’s vital to stress that although vaccines are a powerful tool, they are far from the only tool, adding that there are many things that WHO and its partners are doing to prevent and diagnose infections and treat the sick.
“The outbreak of clade 1b mpox is occurring in one of the poorest and most insecure regions of DRC, complicating the response. Despite these challenges, hundreds of WHO personnel are on the ground in DRC and the other affected countries, working with our partners to stop transmission and bring these outbreaks under control.
“With the government’s leadership and close cooperation between partners, we believe we can stop these outbreaks in next six months. But what this region of DRC needs more than anything else is a political solution to the long-running insecurity”, he said.
