Africa-Press – Mozambique. A total of 22,022 people were vaccinated against Mpox in a five-day campaign in the Mozambican province of Niassa, the epicentre of the disease, the chief medical officer for that region of northern Mozambique told Lusa on Wednesday.
“We had a target of 22,796 from the group that we wanted to reach (…). We consider it a positive outcome because we managed to vaccinate 22,022 patients,” said Amândio Viola, chief medical officer for Niassa province.
The immunisation campaign began on 27 November and ended on Monday, covering seven of Niassa’s 16 districts, namely Lago, Marrupa, Cuamba, Lichinga, Majune, Maúa and Metarica, all with at least one confirmed case of mpox, Viola said.
A total of 23,500 doses of the Imvanex vaccine were administered to contacts of confirmed cases, miners, border guards, migration officials and “frontline groups,” including health professionals and community health workers.
“When the outbreak began, it was concentrated in the district of Lago, specifically in the administrative post of Lupulichi, where we saw that most of the patients we had were miners and female sex workers. [In addition to these], we also included [in the vaccination] those who we thought, due to the nature of their work, were more likely to come into contact with cases of Mpox,” said the official.
According to Amândio Viola, the province of Niassa has not recorded any suspected or active cases of the disease for more than two weeks, after 660 suspected cases were recorded since July, 80 of which were positive for Mpox.
“Of these 80 cases, it should be noted that 64 cases were only confirmed for the Lago district,” added the doctor, noting that immunisation serves to “break the chain of transmission” of the disease in that province.
Despite more than 22,000 people being vaccinated against Mpox, Viola said that health authorities will continue awareness campaigns, in addition to maintaining surveillance, especially in regions near Mozambique’s neighbouring countries with confirmed cases.
Mozambique has a cumulative total of 91 cases of the disease since July, 90 of which have recovered, according to a disease data update bulletin from the Mozambican Ministry of Health, consulted today by Lusa, with information up to Monday.
In addition to Niassa, with 80 positive cases, Mpox cases have also been recorded in the provinces of Maputo (4), Tete (3), Manica (3) and Cabo Delgado (1).
The African country has tested a total of 1,855 people, out of a cumulative total of 1,857 registered suspects, and continues to have no deaths from the disease.
“In the last 24 hours, there have been no reports of suspected mpox cases. No samples have been processed for Mpox,” the document reads.
Despite the significant number of people who have recovered from the disease, the African country cannot yet declare the end of the outbreak because 60 days without a single positive case are required, according to the deputy national director of Public Health, Aleny Couto.
“To declare the end of the outbreak, we must have 60 days without a positive case. Given that we are still having positive cases in Niassa province, we cannot at this time declare the end of the mpox outbreak in the country,” she told Lusa in October.
Health authorities have said that Mozambique is prepared to deal with mpox, with a capacity for 4,000 tests, carried out locally in all provincial capitals through Public Health laboratories.
Mpox is a zoonotic viral disease, first identified in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the current outbreak in southern Africa, since 1 January, 77,458 cases of the disease have been reported in 22 countries, with 501 deaths.
The first case of Mpox in Mozambique occurred in October 2022, involving one patient in Maputo during the previous outbreak.
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