By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged the international community, partners, and organisations to mobilise stockpiles of vaccines and other medical countermeasures for deployment in Africa amid an outbreak of the Mpox.
This mobilisation needs to be coordinated via the mechanisms established by Africa Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention to ensure equitable distribution, transparency, and coordination.
He speaking in his role as the African Union (AU) Champion on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response.
Ramaphosa said, it was time to “correct the unfair treatment” of Africa in vaccine distribution, drawing parallels to the Covid-19 pandemic that saw African countries among the last to roll out vaccines.
“I urge the international community, partners, and organisations to mobilise stockpiles of vaccines and other medical countermeasures for deployment in Africa,” he said.
The WHO has already asked countries with mpox vaccine stockpiles to donate them to countries with ongoing outbreaks.
“This PHEIC (public health emergency) must be different and correct the unfair treatment from the previous one declared in 2022, where vaccines and therapeutics were developed and made available primarily to Western countries,” Ramaphosa added.
A total of 18,737 suspected or confirmed cases of mpox were reported in Africa since the beginning of the year, including 1,200 cases in one week alone, the African CDC said Saturday.
The first cases of the mpox outside of Africa were recorded this week, in Sweden and Pakistan.
The United States has said it will donate 50,000 doses of an mpox vaccine to Democratic Republic of Congo and France said it would also send vaccines to risk countries.
Mpox is a viral disease that can spread from animals to humans, but also human-to-human through sexual or close physical contact. Symptoms include fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.