Sputnik and Europa Press
The newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, September 10, 2024, p. 17
Moscow. China’s first monkeypox vaccine has been approved for clinical trials, the drug’s developers said Monday.
It is expected to play an important role in the prevention and control of diseases caused by monkeypox in the country.
they noted.
The vaccine was developed by scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products, a subsidiary of Sinopharm.
On August 14, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, again declared monkeypox as a public health emergency of international concern
due to the increase in cases in Africa and its spread to other continents.
Monkeypox is a rare zoonotic disease – meaning it can be transmitted between animals and humans – with symptoms of fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, exhaustion, as well as rashes and pustules on the hands and face.
There are 20 thousand cases
The disease is caused by an orthopoxvirus (a genus of poxviruses that includes many species isolated from non-human mammals) and was first detected in humans in 1970 in the Congo.
It is currently considered endemic to central and western Africa.
According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), more than 20,000 infections and 600 deaths have been recorded so far in 2024 on the continent, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi being the countries with the most cases.
In general, the reporting countries are Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, DRC, Gabon, Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.
This week Guinea reported its first case of mpox.
The DRC has the highest number of monkeypox cases, with 1,838 confirmed cases, 1,095 suspected cases and 35 deaths between 23 and 30 August.
The cumulative total for 2024 is more than 20,000 infections with 610 deaths. According to the WHO global report on mpox, 27 confirmed deaths from mpox have been reported in the DRC, where MPXV clades Ia and Ib circulate. According to the African Centers for Disease Control, the majority of reported cases and deaths are in people under 15 years of age (66% of infections and 82% of deaths), while males account for 73% of all those infected.
In Burundi, 328 cases have been confirmed. According to the WHO AFRO situation report, infections were reported in 29 of the 49 districts. More than a third (37.5%) were among children under 10 years of age and 24.6% among people aged 20 to 30 years, with a slight preponderance of men (56%). The test positivity rate is 37.6%.
As of 2 September, Uganda has reported 10 cases. Seven were reported outside Kasese, a border area with the DRC, where there are three cases.
Kenya has reported five cases of mpox. The first two were males who had been detected at entry points. The third is a woman in Nairobi with a history of travel to Uganda.
Liberia reported cases of mpox on 2 and 7 September, bringing the total number of cases in the country to eight.
