Vaccine alliance secures deal for 500,000 mpox jabs for Africa

The Gavi vaccine alliance announced Wednesday a deal with Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic to secure 500,000 jabs against mpox for use in African countries facing an epidemic of the virus.

The announcement came after the World Health Organization last week prequalified an mpox vaccine, MVA-BN, for the first time, paving the way for the United Nations and other international agencies to procure them.

Separately, the Global Fund -- a partnership set up in 2002 to battle AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria -- said it would provide $9.5 million towards the mpox response in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at the epicentre of the current epidemic.

Gavi said the vaccine doses, to be delivered by the end of the year, would be purchased through its First Response Fund, which was created in June to make cash rapidly available for vaccines during health emergencies.

"We are committed to working with affected governments and our partners to turn these vaccines into vaccinations as quickly and effectively as possible," Gavi's chief Sania Nishtar said in a statement.

She said the aim was "to build a global vaccine stockpile", though that would depend on Gavi securing sufficient funding for work through 2030.

Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.

It causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, and in some cases can be deadly.

The WHO declared an international emergency over mpox last month, concerned by the surge in cases of the new Clade 1b strain in the DRC that spread to nearby countries.

Between January and the end of August, DRC had recorded nearly 22,000 cases and more than 700 deaths linked to the virus.

By late August, Clade 1b had also been detected in the DRC's eastern neighbours Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, plus Kenya, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, while single case have been detected in Sweden and Thailand.