KINSHASA, Sept 4, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - The first delivery of almost 100,000 doses of mpox vaccines will arrive in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, the African Union's health watchdog said.

The vast central Africa country of around 100 million people is at the epicentre of the mpox outbreak, with cases and deaths rising.

"We are very pleased with the arrival of this first batch of vaccines in the DRC," Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told AFP, adding that more than 99,000 doses were expected.

More than 17,500 cases and 629 deaths have been reported in the country since the start of the year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The vaccine doses will be transported onboard a plane leaving the Danish capital Copenhagen on Wednesday evening and are due to arrive at Kinshasa's international airport on Thursday at 1100 GMT.

- 'Health war' -
The Congolese National Institute of Public Health, in charge of managing the country's mpox response, indicated that it was still waiting for details on the origin of the vaccines contained in the first delivery.

"Kinshasa is still waiting for documents from the Africa CDC that will provide information on these doses," the institute's director Dieudonne Mwamba Kazadi told AFP.

"We are in a health war against mpox. To face this disease, we need you," Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said on X on Tuesday.

In Africa, mpox is now present in 13 countries, including Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic, according to figures from the Africa CDC dated August 27.

Outside the continent, the virus has also been detected in Sweden, Pakistan and the Philippines.

The WHO said last week that the first vaccine doses would arrive in the DRC in the following days, with other deliveries to follow.

The WHO said at the end of August that around 230,000 MVA-BN vaccine doses produced by Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic were "imminently available to be dispatched to affected regions".

Other countries have also promised to send vaccine doses to African nations.

Spain has promised 500,000 doses and France and Germany 100,000.
The WHO declared an international emergency over mpox on August 14, concerned by the surge in cases of the new Clade 1b strain in the DRC that spread to nearby countries.

Both the Clade 1b strain and Clade 1a are present in eastern DRC.
The WHO's Africa bureau said at the end of last month that 10,000 vaccine doses would be delivered to Nigeria -- Bavarian Nordic vaccines donated by the United States.

This was the first African country to receive doses outside of clinical trials.

Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research.

It was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.
Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.