BRAZZAVILLE, Aug 28, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - The African Union's health watchdog on Wednesday said it was close to securing almost one million mpox vaccine doses, urging manufacturers to share the vaccine-making technology to battle the disease.

     Africa is on the front line of the fight against mpox, with the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring an international emergency earlier this month over the viral disease's spread.

     "We are moving towards securing nearly a million doses," of mpox vaccines, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Director-General Jean Kaseya told a WHO regional meeting in Congo-Brazzaville.

     Several countries have promised to send vaccines to African countries hit by outbreaks, with Spain alone pledging 500,000 doses.

     Kaseya said 215,000 vaccine doses had already been "secured" from Danish manufacturer Bavarian Nordic, but urged it to share the know-how needed for the vaccines to be made locally.

     "We told Bavarian Nordic that we need a transfer of technology towards African manufacturers," he said, adding that he believed mpox vaccines would be made in Africa "very soon".

     Formerly known as monkeypox, mpox is a viral disease transmitted from animals to humans that can also be passed from human to human, causing fever, muscle pain and skin lesions.

     Its resurgence and the detection in Central Africa of a new strain, dubbed Clade 1b, prompted the WHO to declare its highest international alert level on August 14.

     The Democratic Republic of Congo, where the new strain was first detected, has borne the brunt of the epidemic with 90 percent of 2024's reported mpox cases, according to the WHO.

     Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda have also been affected.

     Kaseya said that there were 22,863 suspected cases and 622 deaths as of August 27 linked to the various mpox strains on the continent.

     The director-general was reticent to give details about confirmed cases as "we still have countries with a testing rate of less than 30 percent and we still have countries facing a number of challenges in terms of quality and transport".

     According to the WHO, Africa had 5,281 confirmed cases of mpox from the beginning of 2024 up till August 25.