Congo launches its first mpox vaccination campaign

6/10/2024 6:23

        Congolese health officials launched their first mpox vaccination campaign on Saturday, a key step in efforts to contain an outbreak that has spread from its epicentre in the Democratic Republic of Congo to numerous other African nations this year.
        
        Officials held a ceremony to mark the start of vaccinations at a hospital in the eastern city of Goma, where health workers were first in line to receive the vaccine doses.
        
        The Health Ministry warned on Friday that the campaign's scope would be small due to limited resources. At the moment, 265,000 vaccine doses are available, though more are in the pipeline.
        
        The start of vaccinations begins to address a huge inequity that left African countries with no access to the two shots used to fight a 2022 global mpox outbreak, while they were widely available in Europe and the United States.