DRC centre of Mpox epidemic: WHO declares global public health emergency

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00:00Now you are the head of the Epidemiology and Global Health Division at the National Institute

00:04of Biomedical Research in the DRC, which is of course the epicentre of this outbreak.

00:08How does this outbreak in your opinion compare to past outbreaks of Mpox?

00:16Thank you so much for this opportunity to talk to people regarding Mpox. So I think the

00:24current outbreak is really important compared to the past outbreak, as we see a huge

00:34increase in the number of cases since 2023. And also the new dynamic of transmission that

00:41we are seeing, we knew that Mpox was a zoonotic disease, so most animals to human transmission

00:50and less human to human transmission. And now we are seeing a kind of sustained human to human

00:56transmission and even with subglades that can be transmitted through sexual activities.

01:04And how deadly is Mpox for those who contract it compared to say COVID-19?

01:10Now, I can say that the global mortality of Mpox in the DRC is about 3.6%. So, and I can say that

01:28the burden is mostly among children under 15. And also, we see some comorbidities

01:37in children under 10, under 5, for example. Yeah.

01:47And how effective is the vaccine in combating this latest strain of Mpox? We've been reading

01:54so much about the 1B, the clade 1B variant that was detected, a first case of which was detected

02:00in Sweden just five days ago. How effective is the vaccine in combating this strain,

02:05this latest strain of Mpox? For the moment, we don't know exactly how effective can be the

02:14vaccine. We know that the vaccine can provide a good immunogenicity, but there is no, in my

02:23knowledge, a study done to assess the effectiveness of efficacy of the vaccine in our context. So,

02:32we don't know, but we suppose that if the vaccine was designed for the Mpox in general,

02:41it should be effective against also the clade 1B. But as I can say, we are not sure 100%.

02:51And what then are the main challenges when it comes to vaccine access in Africa? And also

02:56crucially, how much enthusiasm is there among the general population for a new Mpox vaccine?

03:03I think the challenge is first the number of doses available. I think for the whole continent,

03:12we estimate about maybe 10 million of vaccine doses. But it seems like in the pipeline,

03:21there are maybe around like 500,000 doses that could be available through donation from partners

03:29and so on. So, we think that it's not enough and we need to work more and the countries need to

03:40also be really involved to see how we can get more vaccine for the population. As we know that

03:46after the cessation of smallpox vaccination, all people born after the cessation of smallpox

03:55vaccination are susceptible to get this Mpox. So, we need as we are working to prevent and

04:04get the vaccine, but we need also to see how we can also improve case management.

04:12Plessy Dumbala, Associate Professor at the University of Kinshasa School of Medicine.

04:15Thank you so much for speaking to us today.

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