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Nigeria has received 10,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine, becoming the first African country to receive the vaccine following the current monkeypox outbreak.
The country’s vaccine security efforts began before the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency in the country earlier this month.
Africa has been hardest hit by the rapid spread of African swine fever, and there have been calls for international agencies to respond more quickly to such emergencies.
Nigeria has confirmed 40 cases of smallpox this year, but says the true number could be more than 700. The country’s vaccine doses were donated by the United States.
The West African country has not reported any deaths from the virus. The country also has not reported any cases of type 1b, a new variant in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that has also spread to neighboring countries.
The Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa has recorded more than 18,000 suspected cases of mpox and 615 deaths this year.
There is currently no vaccine for smallpox, but a smallpox vaccine can fight the disease and is being produced by two pharmaceutical companies.
Nigeria said health workers and high-risk groups in the 13 affected states will be given priority in the vaccination campaign.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 10 million doses of vaccine are needed across the continent, with the greatest need in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The 1b variant has caused concern among governments, scientists and international health agencies, but it is not yet clear how deadly and contagious it is.
If left untreated, Mpox can be fatal and cause symptoms such as fever, muscle pain, and systemic lesions.
The first vaccines have been slow to arrive in Africa, with critics saying the WHO’s regulatory process poses major challenges.
Many low- and middle-income countries rely on the WHO rather than their own drug regulators to judge which medicines are safe and effective.
But the New York Times recently reported that the WHO is “extremely risk-averse” and “concerned about the need to protect its credibility.”
Although two years have passed since the last outbreak of the Clade 2 variant in Nigeria, the WHO has yet to formally approve the two available vaccines. It said it did not have the data needed to conduct a full review..
Professor Helen Rees, an adviser to the WHO and the Africa CDC, told the BBC that WHO’s regulatory procedures were “not fit for purpose for emergencies”.
She said international health agencies needed to “take a hard look” at how they approved medical products when they were urgently needed.
Just this month, the WHO asked vaccine manufacturers to register their interest in obtaining emergency licensure for the MPox vaccine, which would allow the WHO to expedite approval.
Many public health officials and scientists told Reuters that the situation may have started years ago.
The WHO is expected to grant MPox an emergency license in September.
Africa’s first 10,000 vaccines were sent to Nigeria instead of the Democratic Republic of Congo due to an early awareness campaign by Nigerian health officials after the outbreak began in 2022.
At a news conference in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to celebrate the arrival of vaccines produced by Danish pharmaceutical company Bavaria Nordic, U.S. Ambassador Richard Mills praised Nigeria for “leading a coordinated effort to respond to the pandemic before it escalated.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAid) said it had also donated 50,000 doses of the vaccine to the Democratic Republic of Congo, but has not yet announced a delivery date.
Ms Rees told the BBC’s Newsday programme that although Africa eventually received its first shipments of vaccines, the delay could have been shorter if more wealthy countries had donated vaccines like the United States did.
“After 2022, many of the countries that are affected by the (MPox) outbreak … many of them have millions of vaccines in stock,” she said.
“These reserves are obviously from a national perspective to protect their own citizens. But when there is a global emergency like this, every country should look at their reserves and think, ‘Can we really help the world?'”
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