- NEWS Q&A
Mpox vaccine roll-out begins in Africa: what will success look like?
Mpox has spread to 15 African countries this year, 6 of which had never seen a single case of the disease, leaving health officials scrambling to contain the continent’s deadliest mpox surge so far. But they finally have a new tool to help: vaccines, which were previously unavailable in Africa despite mpox first being detected on the continent decades ago.
Mpox vaccines, which have been used in wealthy nations such as Germany and the United States, did not materialize in Africa during earlier outbreaks, even the global one in 2022, says Nicaise Ndembi, a virologist at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) in Addis Ababa. This year, however, countries have pledged doses, and the jabs have begun to arrive, after the World Health Organization declared mpox a global public-health emergency for the second time in history.
On 17 September, Rwandan health officials began administering jabs to those at high risk of infection; the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has been the country hit hardest by the disease, will follow suit on 5 October; and Nigeria is set to start its own vaccinations in the next two weeks.
Virologist Nicaise Ndembi is coordinating the mpox response for Africa’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Credit: Russian Look via ZUMA Press
These developments come as African countries report more than 31,400 suspected mpox infections and 844 deaths in 2024. Clade Ib, a new strain of the virus that causes mpox, has also spread in densely populated regions; some transmission is occurring through sexual contact, allowing the virus to spread between people efficiently.
It isn’t yet known how effective the vaccines will be against clade I virus — they helped during the global outbreak two years ago, but that crisis was driven by a different strain, called clade IIb. Still, many scientists emphasize that the jabs are safe and expected to work.
Here, Ndembi, who is coordinating the Africa CDC’s mpox response, discusses how health officials are planning to distribute the doses and the challenges they will face.
Is the number of doses that you’re receiving what you would have expected from an equitable global response during the 2022 global outbreak?
We are doing much better. There are about 275,000 doses that we currently have on hand, and they have already been dispatched to countries for administering. In the 2022 pandemic, we didn’t get a single dose of vaccine.
If you put together the pledges and what’s already been delivered, there are about 6.1 million doses coming. But you can’t vaccinate with pledges: the 10,000 doses that Nigeria received in 2024 were actually pledged in 2022. So you can see the disparities. But to now have 6.1 million doses pledged is incredible. Now, we need to see them materialize.
We’re looking at vaccinating 10 million people [in Africa], but that number might need to be as high as 14 or 15 million.
Until more doses arrive, how will countries prioritize who gets jabs first?
This is not a vaccination campaign. The messaging around the word ‘campaign’ connotes that everyone can get a shot. But we’re going to be very targeted. We’re hoping to reach specific groups, and we are envisaging that this approach could create problems within the community if we don’t communicate properly who is most at risk of infection and why we’re prioritizing certain groups. We see that many people are waiting for the vaccine — it’s a silver bullet to many. The stigma coming with mpox [which causes visible, fluid-filled lesions, among other symptoms] means everyone wants to get vaccinated.
As an example of prioritizing specific groups, Rwanda has started vaccination, and it’s very targeted among female sex workers and among cross-border traders, truck drivers and health-care workers — all of whom are at high risk [of infection]. We will also use a ‘ring vaccination’ approach: we will identify close contacts of infected people, and those are who you’d want to be sure to vaccinate first.
The DRC is contending with outbreaks of several strains — clade Ib, as well as clade Ia, which typically has spread to people through infected animals. Will that affect how vaccines are distributed?
We will start with the hotspots: the provinces that are most affected are going to be selected in the first bloc, and then subsequently we will move on to other areas.
For the different subtypes of the virus, I want to be very clear: viruses don’t have boundaries. We have to move away from the idea that we could confine an [mpox] subtype in a geographic area. [The city] Kinshasa has both clade Ia and Ib.
We’re not going to say, ‘Let’s start vaccinating the clade Ib areas and then go to the Ia areas.’ That would be too complex.
You mentioned Kinshasa, where both clade I strains are spreading. How concerning is this?
Kinshasa is the entry and exit point for almost all travellers [coming through the region]. There’s definitely worry, because infections there can easily be transported anywhere in the world.
How will you monitor the effectiveness of the vaccines as people receive them?
We have a team already in Rwanda that is working to ensure that we monitor for adverse events and that, over time, those vaccines are effective. They will study the immunogenicity, safety and effectiveness, as well as durability [how long the vaccine’s effects last].
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03243-2
This interview was edited for length and clarity.