KINSHASA: The first delivery of almost 100,000 doses of mpox vaccines will arrive in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, the African Union’s health watchdog said, with a total of 200,000 jabs expected this week.
The vast central Africa country of around 100 million people is at the epicenter of the mpox outbreak, with cases and deaths rising.
“We are very pleased with the arrival of this first batch of vaccines in the DRC,” Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told AFP, adding that more than 99,000 doses were expected on Thursday.
More than 17,500 cases and 629 deaths have been reported in the country since the start of the year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The first cargo of vaccine doses will be transported onboard an aeroplane leaving the Danish capital Copenhagen on Wednesday evening and are due to arrive at Kinshasa’s international airport on Thursday at 1100 GMT.
Another flight carrying the rest of the 200,000 jabs is scheduled to arrive before the end of the week, Africa CDC confirmed. These first vaccines come from the laboratory of Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic.
According to the WHO, the DRC’s government plans to start rolling out the jabs at the weekend.
UNICEF says that thousands of children in the DRC and neighboring countries are at serious risk of contracting the disease.
“We are in a health war against mpox. To face this disease, we need you,” Congolese Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said on X on Tuesday.
In Africa, mpox is now present in at least 13 countries, including Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic, according to figures from Africa CDC dated August 27.
On Wednesday, Guinea said it had recorded its first confirmed case of the disease, convening an emergency meeting in response.
A health official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that the case was discovered in a sub-prefecture close to the Liberian border.
Outside the continent, the virus has also been detected in Sweden, Pakistan and the Philippines.
Other countries have also promised to send vaccine doses to African nations.
Spain has promised 500,000 doses, with France and Germany each pledging 100,000.
The WHO declared an international emergency over mpox on August 14, concerned by the surge in cases of the new Clade 1b strain in the DRC that spread to nearby countries.
Both the Clade 1b and Clade 1a strains are present in the DRC.
The WHO’s Africa bureau said at the end of last month that 10,000 vaccine doses would be delivered to Nigeria — Bavarian Nordic vaccines donated by the United States.
This was the first African country to receive doses outside of clinical trials.
Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research.
It was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.
Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
First mpox vaccines due in DR Congo today
https://arab.news/c4j5q
First mpox vaccines due in DR Congo today
- The vast central Africa country of around 100 million people is at the epicenter of the mpox outbreak, with cases and deaths rising
- More than 17,500 cases and 629 deaths have been reported in DR Congo since the start of the year, World Health Organization says
Rubio defends US ouster of Venezuela’s Maduro to Caribbean leaders unsettled by Trump policies
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts and Nevis: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s military operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, telling Caribbean leaders, many of whom objected to that move, that the country and the region were better off as a result.
Speaking to leaders from the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc at a summit in the country of St. Kitts and Nevis, Rubio brushed aside concerns about the legality of Maduro’s capture last month that have been raised among Venezuela’s island-state neighbors and others.
“Irrespective of how some of you may have individually felt about our operations and our policy toward Venezuela, I will tell you this, and I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio told the leaders in a closed-door meeting, according to a transcript of his remarks later distributed by the US State Department.
Rubio said that since Maduro’s ouster and the effective takeover of Venezuela’s oil sector by the United States, the interim authorities in the South American country have made “substantial” progress in improving conditions by doing “things that eight or nine weeks ago would have been unimaginable.”
The Caribbean leaders have gathered to debate pressing issues in a region that President Donald Trump has targeted for a 21st-century incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine meant to ensure Washington’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The Republican administration has declared a focus closer to home even as Washington increasingly has been preoccupied by the possibility of a US military attack on Iran.
Rubio downplays antagonism in US regional push
In his remarks to the group, America’s top diplomat tried to play down any antagonistic intent in what Trump has referred to as the “Donroe Doctrine.” Rubio said the administration wants to strengthen ties with the region in the wake of the Venezuela operation and ensure that issues such as crime and economic opportunities are jointly addressed.
“I am very happy to be in an administration that’s giving priority to the Western Hemisphere after largely being ignored for a very long time,” Rubio said. “We share common opportunities, and we share some common challenges. And that’s what we hope to confront.”
He said transnational criminal organizations pose the biggest threat to the Caribbean while recognizing that many are buying weapons from the United States, a problem he said authorities are tackling.
Rubio also said the US and the Caribbean can work together on economic advancement and energy issues, especially because many leaders at the four-day summit have energy resources they seek to explore. “We want to be your partner in that regard,” he said.
Rubio said the US recognizes the need for fair, democratic elections in Venezuela, which lies just miles away from Trinidad and Tobago at the closest point.
“We do believe that a prosperous, free Venezuela who’s governed by a legitimate government who has the interests of their people in mind could also be an extraordinary partner and asset to many of the countries represented here today in terms of energy needs and the like, and also one less source of instability in the region,” he said.
Rubio added: “We view our security, our prosperity, our stability to be intricately tied to yours.”
Trump plays up Maduro’s ouster
Trump, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, called the operation that spirited Maduro out of Venezuela to face drug trafficking charges in New York “an absolutely colossal victory for the security of the United States.”
The US had built up the largest military presence in the Caribbean Sea in generations before the Jan. 3 raid. That has now been exceeded by the surge of American warships and aircraft to the Middle East as the administration pressures Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program.
In the Caribbean, Trump has stepped up aggressive tactics to combat alleged drug smuggling with a series of strikes on boats that have killed over 150 people and he has tightened pressure on Cuba. Regional leaders have complained about administration demands for nations to accept third-country deportees from the US and to chill relations with China.
One regional leader who has backed the US escalation is Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, whom Rubio thanked for her “public support for US military operations in the South Caribbean Sea,” the State Department said.
Persad-Bissessar told reporters that her conversation with Rubio focused on “Haiti; we talked about Cuba of course; we talked about engagements with Venezuela and the way forward.”
She was asked if she considered the latest US military strikes in Caribbean waters as extrajudicial killings: “I don’t think they are, and if they are, we will find out, but our legal advice is they are not.”
Rubio had other one-on-one meetings with heads of government, including from St. Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana.
Caribbean leaders point to shifting global order
Trump said during the State of the Union that his administration is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference.”
Terrance Drew, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and chair of the Caribbean Community bloc, said the region “stands at a decisive hour” and that “the global order is shifting.”
Drew and other leaders said Cuba’s humanitarian situation must be addressed.
“It must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned. “It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin.”
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday slightly eased restrictions on the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, which instituted austere fuel-saving measures in the weeks after the US raid in Venezuela.
That move came hours before Cuba’s government announced that its soldiers killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida that had opened fire on officers in Cuban waters.
