Spain to donate 20% of its monkeypox vaccine stockpile to Africa

Ministry Health announced on Tuesday that to donate 100,000 vials of monkeypox vaccine to Africawith which you can control up to 500,000 doses, since each of them can receive up to five punctures. 100,000 vials represent 20% of the reserves are stored in Spain, which, in turn, asks the rest of the EU countries to direct the same percentage of their reserves to the African continent.

Monica Garcia’s department believes it is necessary to act in the region to “firmly and firmly contain the current situation.” And to avoid a repeat of the situation in 2022 and 2023, when “the international emergency was falsely closed,” the ministry says. “There is no point in stockpiling vaccines where there is no problem, and now is the time to demonstrate this,” they said in a statement.

Africa is suffering from an alarming shortage of vaccines. It has barely 400,000 vials, between its reserves (200,000) and the donation announced ten days ago by the European Commission and the Bavarian company Nordic (215,000), while it has to vaccinate some 10 million people to try to stop the spread of mpox. If each vial yields five shots, the continent will need two million.

The Ministry of Health stresses that the current scenario in Africa is within the framework of the scenarios envisaged by the Agreement on Combating the Pandemic, which is being negotiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and various international organizations, and therefore calls on EU member states to increase donations. On Monday, Germany announced the delivery of 100,000 doses.

On August 14, the World Health Organization declared an international health emergency of the highest level due to an outbreak of monkeypox cases in Africa. caused this time by a more aggressive clade of the virus than in 2022. So far, authorities in the worst-hit countries, mainly the Democratic Republic of Congo, have reported more than 500 deaths and about 18,000 infections. Only two cases of the new clade have been reported outside Africa: one in Sweden and one in Thailand.