European Commission to donate more than 2 lakh 15 thousand Monkeypox Vaccines to Africa

Monkeypox Vaccine: The European Commission has said that it will donate more than 215,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). The Africa CDC had declared a public health emergency over the monkeypox outbreak on the continent and appealed to the international community to help collect about 2 million doses of the vaccine.

At least 15,074 cases of monkeypox have been reported from January to July in the 12 member countries of the African Union, including 2,853 confirmed and 12,221 suspected cases, and 461 people have lost their lives due to it.

“The European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) will purchase and donate 175,420 doses of the MVA-BA vaccine, the only monkeypox vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as an immediate response to the monkeypox outbreak in Africa,” the European Commission said on Wednesday. In addition, the pharmaceutical manufacturer Bavarian Nordic will donate 40,000 doses to HERA.