Kaseya says driving from the capital Kinshasa to the affected district takes three days of juggling the poor road network reporting they had received reports that samples earlier collected were poorly preserved and therefore cannot be used.
The countries are the Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. The largest number of doses – 85% of the allocation – will go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the most affected country, reporting four out of every five laboratory-confirmed cases in Africa this year.
Mpox, a disease caused by monkeypox virus, has so far spread to 18 countries in Africa including Uganda where the Ministry of Health recently declared that two positive individuals had been confirmed positive after they entered the country from the neighboring DR Congo.
This was revealed by scientists attending a meeting organized by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to exchange the latest clinical and scientific data with a team from Moderna, one of the COVID-19 vaccines that are currently approved under emergency use criteria.
Dr. Lul Riek a Public Health expert based at the Africa CDC said the continent needs to have reached between 60 and 70% of the population by end of 2022 if hard immunity is to be achieved.
This trial which is so far the largest to be conducted on the continent to identify early COVID-19 treatments that can prevent progression to severe disease and potentially limit transmission has established sites at Makerere and Kabale universities in Uganda.
Kaleebu who was commenting on the deliberations at the meeting told URN that already UVRI is in early stages of working on a Messenger RNA vaccine but their biggest challenge like elsewhere is having to rely on foreign funding.
A large proportion of information shared on online media platforms since the pandemic started global agencies say is inaccurate and misleading and continues to be shared by social media users intentionally or unknowingly every day.
The study dubbed ANTIVOC is launching at 19 sites across 13 countries where 2000 to 3000 patients with mild infection will be enrolled on various treatments to test their safety and efficacy in preventing the disease from progressing into severe state. The countries involved are Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Sudan, and Uganda.
