GENEVA: The World Health Organization on Friday urged manufacturers to ramp up production of mpox vaccines to rein in the spread of a more dangerous strain of the virus.
The WHO on Wednesday declared the mpox surge a public health emergency of international concern — its highest alert level — with Clade 1b cases soaring in the Democratic Republic of Congo and spreading beyond its borders.
“We do need the manufacturers to really scale up so that we’ve got access to many, many more vaccines,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters.
The WHO is asking countries with mpox vaccine stockpiles to donate them to countries with ongoing outbreaks.
Two mpox vaccines have been used in recent years — MVA-BN, produced by Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, and Japan’s LC16.
Harris said there were 500,000 MVA-BN doses in stock, while an additional 2.4 million doses could be produced quickly, if there was a commitment from buyers.
For 2025, an additional 10 million doses could be produced, upon a firm procurement request.
“LC16 is a vaccine that is not commercialized but produced on behalf of the government of Japan. There is a considerable stockpile of this vaccine,” Harris added, saying the WHO was working with Tokyo to facilitate donations.
The Doctors Without Borders charity said countries with vaccine stockpiles but no outbreaks “must donate as many doses as possible” to affected countries in Africa.
It urged Bavarian Nordic to lower its prices, saying MVA-BN was out of reach for most countries where mpox is a threat.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the world’s largest humanitarian network, said it faced significant challenges tackling mpox.
Bronwyn Nichol, IFRC senior public health emergencies officer, said most vaccine stocks were in wealthy nations, and those sent to Africa so far were “a drop in the bucket.”
“There is a critical shortage of testing, treatment, and vaccines across the continent. These shortages are severely hampering the ability to contain the outbreak,” she said.
The WHO, headed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is due to issue temporary recommendations to countries on handling the mpox surge.
There are two subtypes of the virus: the more virulent and deadlier Clade 1, endemic in the Congo Basin in central Africa; and Clade 2, endemic in West Africa.
The upsurge in the DRC is being driven by outbreaks of two different Clade 1 strains, Tedros told a meeting Thursday of the UN health agency’s Standing Committee on Health Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response.
The first is an outbreak in northwest DRC of what was previously known as Clade 1, now called Clade 1a. This outbreak is primarily affecting children and is spread through multiple modes of transmission, he said.
The second in northeastern DRC is a new offshoot of Clade 1 called Clade 1b, which was first detected in September last year and is spreading rapidly, mainly through sexual transmission among adults.
The spread of Clade 1b, and its detection in neighboring countries, were the main reasons behind the WHO sounding its highest alarm.
“It’s a complex picture, and responding to each of these outbreaks, and bringing them under control, will require a complex, comprehensive and coordinated international response,” said Tedros.
WHO seeks mpox vaccine production surge
https://arab.news/b96ru
WHO seeks mpox vaccine production surge
- The WHO is asking countries with mpox vaccine stockpiles to donate them to countries with ongoing outbreaks
- Two mpox vaccines have been used in recent years, MVA-BN, produced by a Danish drugmaker, and Japan’s LC16
Trump sues the BBC for defamation over editing of January 6 speech, seeks up to $10 billion in damages
- A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point
- The BBC is funded through a mandatory license fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught
WASHING: President Donald Trump sued the BBC on Monday for defamation over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair. Trump accused Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a January 6, 2021 speech, including one section where he told supporters to march on the Capitol and another where he said “fight like hell.” It omitted a section in which he called for peaceful protest.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that bars deceptive and unfair trade practices. He is seeking $5 billion in damages for each of the lawsuit’s two counts. The BBC has apologized to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But it has said there is no legal basis to sue.
Trump, in his lawsuit filed Monday in Miami federal court, said the BBC despite its apology “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses.”
The BBC is funded through a mandatory license fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement the BBC “has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda.”
A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same.” The broadcaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed.
CRISIS LED TO RESIGNATIONS
Facing one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC has said it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.
The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s “Panorama” documentary show shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.
The documentary drew scrutiny after the leak of a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about how it was edited, part of a wider investigation of political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster.
The documentary was not broadcast in the United States.
Trump may have sued in the US because defamation claims in Britain must be brought within a year of publication, a window that has closed for the “Panorama” episode.
To overcome the US Constitution’s legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will need to prove not only that the edit was false and defamatory but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly.
The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true and its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. It could also claim the program did not damage Trump’s reputation.
Other media have settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC when Trump sued them following his comeback win in the November 2024 election.
Trump has filed lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and a newspaper in Iowa, all three of which have denied wrongdoing. The attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 was aimed at blocking Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win over Trump in the 2020 US election.
