(Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization expects mpox vaccines will arrive in the Democratic Republic of Congo Thursday as a lethal outbreak of the disease that’s become a global health emergency spreads.
The shots are a donation from the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response unit, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus told reporters Wednesday.
“We call on countries with stockpiles of vaccines to work with us and our partners to get those vaccines where they’re needed now,” he said, adding that the WHO and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention will likely publish a continent-wide response plan Friday.
The spread of the new strain of mpox from Congo — where children account for more than 80% of deaths from the disease — has seen the number of cases on the continent increase in nations such as Burundi and Gabon.
The WHO is working with its partners to coordinate vaccine demands, ensure the necessary cold chains systems are in place, share information on the doses available and direct them to areas where they can contribute to controlling the outbreak.
Congo plans to start deploying the vaccines from Sept. 7, Tedros said.
“But vaccines alone won’t stop these outbreaks,” he said. “We are also working to strengthen surveillance, risk communication, community engagement, clinical and home care and coordination between partners.”
The WHO is also concerned about the increase in cases of the fast-spreading clade Ib in Burundi, which has 331 confirmed cases, said Maria Van Kerkhove, the head of the emerging diseases and zoonoses unit in the agency’s emergency program.
“What’s concerning about Burundi is that the cases are dispersed through the country, so we aren’t seeing these small pockets of outbreaks,” she said. “This indicates to us that there’s more transmission, there’s more circulation, that’s happening.”
To get a better sense of how the virus is spreading it’s critical to get better surveillance with detailed field investigations and the ability of affected countries to carry out diagnostics, she said.
(Updates with concerns about spread in Burundi from eighth paragraph)
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