Africa desperately needs mpox vaccines. But donations from wealthy countries won’t fix this or the next health crisis

Africa says it needs estimates ten million doses MPox vaccine to control this public health threat.

The situation is particularly worrying in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he reported This year, there have been over 27,000 suspected cases of MPox and over 1,300 deaths.

Europe and United States promised to donate mpox vaccines. In emergencies, donations are welcome. But donations are a “stop-gap” charitable solution that cannot be relied upon.

Here’s what needs to be done to ensure equitable access to MPox vaccines in the face of this and the next public health emergency.

How did we get here?

Less than a month has passed since the World Health Organization (WHO) mpox declared an international public health threat of international concern due to the increasing number of cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the potential risk of further spread of the disease.

Mpox virus, formerly known as monkeypox, has spread to countries where it had never been seen before, likely due to a recent, more contagious strain of the virus.

But the WHO has not yet approved the mpox vaccines. This is necessary before groups such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance AND UNICEF can begin purchasing vaccines and distributing them to affected countries that have not yet approved them independently.

Once the vaccines are approved by WHO, vaccine donations can also be distributed. These include: approximately 175,000 doses from the European Commission and another 40,000 from vaccine producer Bavarian Nordic. The United States has also committed 50,000 doses from national stockpiles.

Even in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, which issued emergency approval for vaccines in June, donated vaccines have only reached apparently he just arrived.

Other wealthy countries have not been as willing to donate vaccines. Canada has so far he did not commit to share any of several million doses. Australia has secured some doses of the vaccine for its population, but did not mention anything about donations.

There are also worries on how effective current vaccines will be against the recent strain of the virus.

We’ve seen this before

In 2022, the Democratic Republic of Congo recorded another mbox explosionThe United States, Canada and the European Union were concerned enough that I bought vaccines from Bavarian Scandinavia. But that left nothing for the poorer countries.

If vaccines had been available in Africa at that time, the current state of emergency could have been stopped in the bud, he said. Ahmed Ogwell OumaActing Director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Low-income countries, especially those in Africa, are always last in the queue when it comes to accessing vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.

This is a story that was repeated many times over the last few decades – with HIV/AIDS, Ebola and most recently COVID.

In the first year of availability of COVID-19 vaccines, 75-80% of people in high-income countries have been vaccinated against less than 10% in low-income countries.

This uneven distribution is not inevitable. It is a legacy of the exploitation of the natural resources of the colonized world by opulent countries, a practice that continues today. global economic trade and investment rules that keep low-income countries needy and dependent on richer ones.

Here’s What Happened to COVID Products

One key example is the international intellectual property system governed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). This agreement gives companies control over the production and pricing of their products—including COVID vaccines—until their patents expire. As a result, only wealthy countries can afford these vaccines.

In 2020, India and South Africa, supported eventually by more than 100 other low- and middle-income countries, he offered to waive for COVID medical products for a restricted time. This would free up scientific knowledge, technology and other intellectual property to enable the ramp-up of production of vaccines, diagnostics, treatments and other products needed to address the pandemic.

Less than two years later, the World Trade Organization approved heavily diluted version The waiver, which lasts just five years, only marginally facilitated the export of COVID vaccines. It did not cover any other COVID medical products, including treatments and diagnostics, or the transfer of know-how and technology needed to safely and effectively scale up production as quickly as possible.

We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Outbreaks of Mpox and future infectious diseases are certain to occur as climate change and environmental degradation augment the risk of disease transmission from animals to humans.

Such epidemics will not be prevented or controlled by charitable actions, voluntary sharing of knowledge by pharmaceutical companies, or the goodwill of countries in the WTO.

African countries have recognized the need strengthen self-sufficiency their public health systems. To address current global imbalances, they recognized that they needed to strengthen their collective voice on global health issues and become more effective in preparing for and responding to disease threats. There is a framework for action.

But the global maldistribution of emergency medicines is not a problem that Africa can solve alone. A recent set global rules It is also necessary to ensure that all countries work together to prevent, prepare for, and respond to pandemics and to share vaccines and other needed medical supplies. This is vital to ensure that the global vaccine inequity experienced by COVID is not repeated.

WHO Member States agreed to negotiate such an agreement in December 2021. But they did not meet the deadline they set for its conclusion by mid-2024.

While we are not facing a pandemic at this stage, the current public health emergency in MPOX reinforces the need for a coordinated, global effort to negotiate arrangements to ensure a more equitable distribution of vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tests.

All countries should take note. Perhaps the upcoming negotiations on the WHO pandemic agreement – ​​which sets out how the world manages pandemic prevention, preparedness and response – are the perfect opportunity.