The first vaccination campaign against mpox in Africa began on Tuesday in Rwanda, where about 300 people were immunized, a spokesman for the Africa CDC, the African Union's health agency, told AFP.
“Vaccination began in Rwanda on September 17 and about 300 high-risk individuals have been vaccinated,” Addis Asheber, a spokesman for the Africa CDC, told AFP on Thursday.
This vaccination was carried out in “seven districts” […] which borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo [RDC]Ngashi Ngongo, the agency's chief of staff and chief executive officer, explained at a press conference.
In Congo, the epicenter of Africa’s mpox epidemic, the vaccination campaign will begin “in the first week of October,” Jean Kaseya, director of the Africa CDC, said at the same press conference.
“Mpox is out of control,” he warned.
The agency recorded 374 new confirmed cases and 14 deaths on the continent in a week, bringing the total to 6,105 confirmed cases and 738 deaths.
The epidemic has spread to 15 countries in Africa.
The resurgence of cases on the continent and the emergence of a new variant (clade 1b) led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, the highest alert level, in mid-August.
Monkeypox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans, but also between humans, causing fever, muscle pain, and skin lesions.
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