With almost 4,000 cases reported in a week, "we can see the increase (...) compared to last week (...) This shows us that the outbreak is still progressing," said Jean Kaseya, director general of Centros African Disease Control and Prevention Council (CDC Africa), in an online press conference, repeating a call for long-awaited vaccines.
According to the latest data from the AU agency, which highlights that it is difficult to report cases in these countries, 22,863 cases have been documented so far (3,641 confirmed and 19,222 pending analysis results) in Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR ), People's Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo), Gabon, Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.
"(Epidemiological) surveillance in Africa remains weak. We know that in many areas we have an underreporting of cases," warned Kaseya, who said that the institution will send 72 epidemiologists to the affected areas to improve the recording of infections.
Regarding the arrival of vaccines on the continent, the director of CDC Africa said he expects the first doses to arrive at the beginning of next September in DRCongo - a country that borders Angola and where the highest number of cases is.
Kaseya recalled that the European Union (EU) will donate to the continent more than 215 thousand doses of the vaccine manufactured by the Danish pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic, the only one approved against mpox by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and its counterpart in the United States of America.
"What we are doing is trying to unite the efforts of all African countries," said the director general of the health agency, who plans to convene a meeting of the region's heads of state in September to approve a continental response plan.
The DRCongo government asked Japan to donate two million doses of the vaccine produced by the Japanese company KM Biologics, and negotiations have progressed well in this regard, said epidemiologist Ngashi Ngongo, head of the Executive Office of CDC Africa, at a press conference.
The Africa CDC declared mpox a "continental security public health emergency" on August 13.
A day later, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international health alert for mpox, an infectious disease that can cause swollen glands and painful or itchy rashes, including pimples or blisters.
The WHO health alert is related to the rapid spread and high mortality of the new variant (clade 1b) on the African continent and a first case in Sweden of a traveler who was in an area of Africa where the virus circulates intensely.
This variant is different from 'clade 2', which caused a violent outbreak in Africa in 2022 and hundreds of cases in Europe, North America and countries in other regions, and which has already led to the declaration of an international health emergency in 2022. and 2023.
