Nigeria Begins Mpox Vaccination Program After Delays

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Facts

  • Health workers administered shots to 30 people at the Federal Medical Center in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja, on Monday, marking the kickoff of a vaccination program that had been due to start more than a month ago.[1]
  • Expected to last 10 days — and take place across seven states as well as the capital — this effort will focus on health workers who work in facilities to which mpox cases are referred, immunocompromised people, and contacts of confirmed cases.[1][2]
  • Nigeria, which in August became the first African nation to receive vaccines to fight the viral disease, was set to start its vaccination program on Oct. 8 but authorities opted to postpone the rollout due to a surge in infections.[3][4]
  • As of Oct. 27, the country's Center for Disease Control and Prevention had reported 118 confirmed cases across 28 states and Abuja, and nearly 1.5K suspected cases nationwide this year alone.[2]
  • According to Africa's Center for Disease Control, thousands of new suspected cases were reported across 19 countries in the continent last week, as well as 461 new confirmed infections and 34 deaths.[5]
  • Originally named monkeypox, the disease was first detected in humans in 1970 in DR Congo, and the next year in Nigeria. Over the past two years, the World Health Organization has twice declared mpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.[6][7]

Sources: [1]Reuters, [2]Punch Newspapers, [3]BBC News, [4]Businessday NG, [5]Premium Times Nigeria, [6]Science and [7]WHO Director.

Narratives

  • Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Nature. With the support of the international community, Nigeria and other countries affected by Africa's deadliest mpox surge on record are able to administer vaccines against the disease — at least to specific groups — and control the epidemic. There's still a long way to go, but the future looks much brighter now than during the 2022 outbreak.
  • Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Al Jazeera. Despite the WHO having twice raised the alarm internationally over the threat posed by mpox, not enough has been done to tackle this crisis. Some have even blamed 'vaccine nationalism' — the inequity by which nations exploit their relative wealth to reserve vaccines in advance of their availability to the developing world — undermining the efficacy of any potential global response. Even the current vaccine rollout is limited to only the highest risk groups, rather than the broader population.

Predictions