Emergent BioSolutions says it would donate 50,000 doses of its smallpox vaccine to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other impacted countries of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to address the current mpox pox outbreak.
Emergent’s ACAM2000 vaccine, which is approved for smallpox, has been used as a mpox shot.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is yet to approve its application for use against the virus.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ACAM2000, a live, replicating virus vaccine has multiple side effects.
ACAM2000 is known to cause myocarditis/pericarditis, swelling in or around the heart muscle – in 1 in 175 new ACAM2000 vaccine recipients, according to the FDA.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that the increase of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a growing number of countries in Africa constitutes a public health emergency.
An emergency committee met to advise Tedros on whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
PHEIC status is WHO’s highest level of alert and aims to accelerate research, funding and international public health action and cooperation to contain the disease.
“It’s clear that a coordinated international response is essential to stop these outbreaks and save lives,”
“The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern DRC, its detection in neighbouring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying,” Tedros said.
This PHEIC determination is the second in two years relating to mpox.
Caused by an Orthopoxvirus, mpox was first detected in humans in 1970, in the DRC. The disease is considered endemic to countries in Central and West Africa.
