Congo asked Japan for 2 million mpox vaccine doses, health officials say

By Bhargav Acharya and Sonia Rolley

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo's government has asked Japan to donate at least 2 million doses of mpox vaccine, a senior official at Africa's top public health body and a Congolese official said on Tuesday.

Japan's government said last week that Congo had requested mpox vaccine shots, but did not say how many.

Ngashi Ngongo from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) told a briefing that the health agency understood that talks with Japan were "quite advanced" and Congo wanted the vaccine to protect children.

The head of Congo's mpox response team, Cris Kacita, confirmed to Reuters the Central African country had asked Japan for over 2 million vaccine doses.

Mpox is a potentially deadly infection that causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions and spreads through close physical contact.

It was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization earlier this month after a new strain, known as clade Ib, spread from Congo to neighbouring African countries.

Japan holds a stockpile of the LC16 mpox vaccine made by Japanese company KM Biologics. Denmark's Bavarian Nordic makes another vaccine called Jynneos. The first mpox vaccines could arrive in Africa in the first week of September, according to Africa CDC.

Several strains of mpox are spreading in Africa at the same time, but Congo accounts for the vast majority of the cases that have been reported on the continent this year.

A presentation by the Africa CDC on Tuesday said that as of Aug. 26, 13 African countries had reported more than 22,800 mpox cases and 622 deaths in 2024, up from 12 countries reporting over 18,900 cases and 541 deaths a week earlier.

Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya told reporters the African continent was not ready for another pandemic after being treated unfairly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We faced COVID, we didn't have vaccines, medicines. We didn't have even syringes, gloves, and were abandoned. Today we are in a similar situation where we start to look for vaccines because we don't manufacture vaccines," he said.

Kaseya said a preliminary report showed only one unnamed African vaccine manufacturer had the capacity to make Bavarian Nordic's mpox vaccine, given the right technology transfer.

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Johannesburg and Sonia Rolley in Paris; Additional reporting by Tannur Anders in Johannesburg; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Ros Russell)