Africa-Press – Botswana. The number of monkeypox cases continues to increase rapidly in some African countries due to the lack of vaccines on the continent, the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) announced this Thursday.
“We call for the immediate distribution of existing vaccines against monkeypox (monkeypox) to immunize affected communities to health workers,” Ahmed Ogwell, acting director of Africa CDC, the African Union’s public health agency, told a conference. press release from the organization’s headquarters in Addis Ababa.
“This is what Africa needs, what Africa deserves, and what Africa is asking the international community for,” he added.
In addition to ensuring that monkeypox vaccines reach Africa, Ogwell also stressed the importance of the continent developing “capacity to manufacture vaccines as well as research and develop new products that it may need”.
“Africa has a huge gap in access not only to vaccines, but also to other health products that we need,” he said.
Ogwell lamented in late July that the continent had not yet received any doses of monkeypox vaccines, while countries such as the United States and members of the European Union were purchasing the drugs.
To date, the 55 countries in Africa CDC have recorded more than 4,100 cases of monkeypox, of which only 483 infections could be confirmed.
Three nations on the continent – the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo), Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa – recorded 656 new cases of monkeypox in the last week, of which only 24 were confirmed, and 19 deaths.
Most of these infections and deaths occurred in the DRC, where there were 558 cases and 17 deaths.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced more than 18,000 cases of monkeypox on the continent since the beginning of this year.
All countries where the disease is endemic are African: Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), DRC, Gabon, Ghana (where it has only been identified in animals), Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Sierra Lioness and South Sudan.
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