Offiicials stand near mpox vaccines as first batches arrive at N'Djili International Airport in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo on September 5, 2024. REUTERS
The Democratic Republic of Congo has battled all manner of deadly virus outbreaks: Ebola, Covid-19, cholera, measles, all which killed hundreds, if not thousands and scarred the country.
Now it is in a new fight against Mpox.
This week, Kinshasa received the first batch of Mpox vaccine. Some 100,000 doses arrived in on Thursday. Another batch of 200,000 doses was due to arrive at the end of the week.
According to a government's dispatch schedule, some doses would be sent to Lubumbashi in the south of the country, some will be held in Kinshasa for transport to the central parts of the country, and others will go to Goma, in North Kivu.
Dr Roger Kamba, Minister for Health, labelled this a new “health war.”
“We are waging a health war against Mpox,” he said on Thursday.
In the DRC, children aged between 0 and 14 years are the most affected. Dr Kamba encouraged the public to get vaccinated, and take preventive measures such as washing hands regularly to reduce the spread of the disease.
Public awareness and vaccination are important tools in the war. In the past, officials struggled to provide Covid-19 vaccines as false information was spread around the villages about the risks in the vaccines.
Still, the DRC was among African countries that didn’t register a huge toll from the pandemic.
But Mpox is different. It started there, making Congo endemic to the viral disease.
Dr Jean Kaseya, Director-General of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said the vaccination plan will prioritise those who are already infected, those who have been in contact with those infected, health workers, those with deficient immunity, those with a malnutrition problem and those living with HIV.
“Priority will also be given to community workers who do the work of identifying cases of Mpox and taking them to health centres.
"These are the target groups for the moment, until we can get a lot more vaccines to extend vaccination,” he said.
The arrival of the first doses of the Mpox vaccine should put people's minds at rest, especially as the authorities in Kinshasa have been waiting for months for these jabs.
According to figures from the DRC's Ministry of Health, Mpox has claimed more than 650 lives since the start of the year. Another 19,000 suspected cases have been recorded in the country's 26 provinces.
In every province, dealing with the resurgence of this disease is an emergency. But this urgency is even more pressing in North Kivu, where people displaced by the wars there are already living in overcrowded camps.
“Containing the virus in eastern sites for displaced people will be impossible, unless efforts are made to listen to people's needs and improve the appalling living conditions they are struggling with for too long,” said Dr Tejshri Shah, director-general of medical charity MSF, and a paediatrician specialising in infectious diseases, who recently completed assignment working among displaced communities in North Kivu.
War in DRC has forced seven million people to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere, where they are exposed to famine, violence and insecurity.
“While the lethality of this new strain remains limited, there is still reason to worry. Why? Because conditions necessary to prevent it from spreading in and around Goma are not in place, and the capacity to provide care for patients at risk of complications -- young children, people with advanced HIV -- remains limited,” Dr Shah said on Thursday.
“How can we expect families living in tiny shelters, without adequate water, sanitation facilities, or even soap, to implement preventive measures? How can malnourished children have the strength to ward off complications? And how can we expect this variant, which is notably transmitted through sexual contact, not to spread in displacement sites given the dramatic levels of sexual violence and exploitation affecting girls and women living there?"
