Africa CDC Teams Up with Bavarian Nordic for Mpox Vaccine Production
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, also known as Africa CDC, is talking to a company called Bavarian Nordic. They want to work together so that African countries can make their own Mpox vaccines.
Dr. Jean Kaseya, who is the boss of Africa CDC, shared this news during a regular meeting about Mpox on Tuesday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) mentioned that Bavarian Nordic is the only company in the world that makes the Mpox vaccine right now.
Dr. Kaseya thanked Bavarian Nordic for agreeing to share their knowledge. This will help Africa make its vaccines in the future.
He said that the goal is to have 10 million doses of the vaccine ready by the end of 2025. Bavarian Nordic thinks this goal can be met too.
But there is a problem. Even though making vaccines in Africa is a good plan for the long term, Africa still needs help right now because of the Mpox outbreak in 12 countries.
Dr. Kaseya urged richer countries to donate to help Africa deal with the crisis immediately. He called this an “emergency humanitarian era.”
He also thanked the European Union (EU) for buying 215,000 doses of the vaccine for Africa.
“Last week, Africa saw an increase of 1,405 Mpox cases, bringing the total to 18,910,” Dr. Kaseya said.
The biggest rise in cases was in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with 1,030 new cases, making it 17,794 in total. DRC is the center of the outbreak.
However, it’s tough to stop the outbreak there because there’s a lot of fighting going on in eastern DRC,” he added.
He also pointed out that some countries are not doing a good job of tracking the disease.
“Other countries, like Burundi, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria, have also seen more cases,” Dr. Kaseya noted.
“Burundi’s cases went up from 265 to 572, the Central African Republic’s cases went from 206 to 263, and Nigeria’s cases rose from 24 to 39,” he explained.
“No new cases were reported in Cameroon, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, or Liberia. The total number of deaths is now 541,” he concluded.