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Berlin Germany is donating 100,000 doses of vaccine to the affected countries in the fight against the disease Mpox in Africa. The vaccine will come from the Bundeswehr’s stocks, said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit today in Berlin.

The aim is to support the international efforts to contain Mpox on the African continent in solidarity. The World Health Organization (WHO), among others, recently called for vaccine donations. They are considered an important means of bridging the time until the vaccine doses that have just been ordered are available.

The federal government is thus giving up almost its entire stock of the Mpox vaccine. According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, a total of 118,000 doses are currently in stock. A possible reorder has not yet been decided. When asked about what will be done with the remaining vaccine doses, the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) did not respond.

How to query the German Medical Journal As revealed last week, there are still almost 61,000 Mpox vaccine doses in stock in the 16 federal states. However, most states are of the opinion that the federal government should decide on a possible donation of these vaccines. The question of how the federal government intends to deal with these reserves also remained open today.

In any case, several federal states no longer consider the vaccine, which was centrally procured by the federal government in the wake of the Mpox outbreak in 2022, to be marketable. It is the Jynneos preparation, intended for the US market, which is not approved in the EU. It was used for a while with an exception when the Imvanex preparation, which has now been approved in the EU, was not yet available.

In the medium term, Germany, together with European partners, will also support the African Union in setting up local vaccine production, explained Hebestreit. According to the information, it has not yet been finally clarified how the vaccine will reach the affected regions.

Berlin The German federal states still have 60,840 Mpox vaccine doses in stock from a central federal procurement in 2022. It is currently unclear whether any of this will be given to African countries with current Mpox outbreaks. This was the result of a query by the German Medical Journal to the 16 health ministries of the states. There have been no donations or discussions about this. […]

The Federal Government is supporting the affected countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, with money through the World Health Organization (WHO) and is also bringing in expertise from German specialist institutions.

It is already known that a mobile laboratory to detect the virus will be delivered to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Specialists will be trained so that they can recognize symptoms of the disease and educate the population about preventive measures.

The WHO recently declared the highest level of alert due to the Mpox outbreaks in Africa and a new, possibly more dangerous variant (clade Ib). In addition to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and neighboring countries are also affected.

According to WHO data, more than 18,000 suspected cases with 575 deaths have already been registered in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) this year. However, experts point out that there are uncertainties in these figures.

Mpox researcher Wolfgang Preiser, who heads the Department of Medical Virology at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, pointed out in an interview with the newspaper World on Sunday for example, a possible influence of further epidemics.

In the German Red Cross, several epidemics are occurring simultaneously: polio, cholera, measles and, above all, chickenpox. I ask myself: how many of the suspected cases of Mpox are actually chickenpox or something else entirely?, said Preiser.

The HIV status of those affected must also be clarified. Co-infections could also lead to infection even through casual physical contact, which could result in a noticeable number of children under the age of five dying.

More than 200 infections with the new Mpox variant Ib have been confirmed in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Ib cases have also been registered in people in Sweden and Thailand who had previously been in Africa.

The WHO estimates that it will need $135 million in the next six months to fight Mpox. This does not include the cost of two million vaccine doses, according to a planning paper from the UN organization in Geneva.

The money will be invested in tests and research, among other things. Measures will also be financed to prevent transmission from animals to humans and to involve communities in the fight against MPOX, the WHO said. © ggr/dpa/afp/aerzteblatt.de