The DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa needs more than double the mpox vaccines it currently has to immunise all the city’s at-risk population, the virus response chief told AFP Wednesday.
Vaccinations began in the Ndolo prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital a week ago, said Cris Kacita, who is coordinating the mpox response.
According to Kacita there are currently around 50,000 mpox vaccine doses allocated to Kinshasa, which has a population of around 17 million.
“We need 110,000 doses” for Kinshasa, Kacita said.
Authorities plan to jab people inside prisons before moving to other vulnerable people such as sex workers, Kacita added.
“We have found that the prison population was the most exposed, since there have been cases (there),” he said.
The vaccine coordination chief said that he does not know when more jabs will arrive in the DRC, the epicentre of the current mpox epidemic.
“We are waiting for donations from France and other countries… that will allow us to have enough doses for Kinshasa,” he said.
“It would be a big problem for us if we don’t know how to acquire the vaccine doses,” Kacita added.
He could not immediately say how many people had been vaccinated in Kinshasa.
The DRC’s health ministry said on X on Tuesday that the vaccination campaign had started in the city.
“The city of Kinshasa currently has 123 active patients,” it added in the post.
In early October the DRC launched its vaccination campaign in the east of the country, which has been hardest hit by the virus.
1,000 deaths
Since the start of the year the central African country has recorded more than 42,000 cases and over 1,000 deaths.
The number of cases continues to rise but the speed of the spread has slowed slightly in recent weeks, according to the African Union’s health agency.
So far the DRC has received 265,000 vaccine doses, including donations from the United States and European Union.
But it is still waiting for millions more promised doses to arrive from countries including France and the United States.
The vaccines the DRC currently has are manufactured by Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic and only intended for adults.
The DRC has been in talks to secure further supplies from Japan, where another mpox vaccine has been approved for use on both adults and children.
Kacita said he does not know when the DRC could receive these doses.
Sometimes deadly, mpox causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
Previously known as monkeypox, it is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
