Moves by rich countries to buy large quantities of monkeypox vaccine, while declining to share doses with Africa, could leave millions of people unprotected against a more dangerous version of the disease and risk continued spillovers of the virus into humans, public health officials are warning.
"The mistakes we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic are already being repeated," said Dr. Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University.While rich countries have ordered millions of vaccines to stop monkeypox within their borders, none have announced plans to share doses with Africa, where a more lethal form of monkeypox is spreading than in the West.
Scientists say that unlike campaigns to stop COVID-19, mass vaccination against monkeypox won't be necessary. They think targeted use of the available doses, along with other measures, could shut down the expanding epidemics recently designated by the World Health Organization as a global emergency. "If we're not safe, the rest of the world is not safe," said Africa CDC's acting director, Ahmed Ogwell.
WHO is developing a vaccine-sharing mechanism for affected countries, but has released few details about how it might work. The U.N. health agency has made no guarantees about prioritizing poor countries in Africa, saying only that vaccines would be dispensed based on epidemiological need. At the moment, there is only one producer of the most advanced monkeypox vaccine: the Danish company Bavarian Nordic. Its production capacity this year is about 30 million doses, with about 16 million vaccines available now.