Mpox: Are EU and others putting patents above patients?

With more than 17,000 cases identified across the continent and more than 570 deaths linked to the virus, the threat of mpox across Africa is real and growing. 

Ninety six percent of cases in the latest strain of the virus outbreak have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and residents of the Munigi demobilization camps have been lining up to have their mpox symptoms treated.

Health minister Samuel Roger Kamba Mulamba says the country hopes to receive its first vaccines next week.

According to Mulamba: "It's really a whole logistics chain, from our acceptance first and then a few administrative procedures before shipment. But our strategic vaccination response plan is already ready. We're just waiting for the vaccines to arrive." 

Those vaccines are set to come from stocks held by Japan and the U.S. which have struck a deal to donate them to Kinshasa. Countries across Africa are dependent on donations.

The current situation is that most vaccines are held in Europe, the United States and other developed nations. 

Max Lawson, of aid charity Oxfam, is chair of the People's Medicine Alliance and says the inequality in vaccine distribution is a matter of cold hard economics.

He said: "It's all about money and profit, and there's no money or profit in the developing world and particularly in Africa, which is why you need a system, which is what the World Health Organization called for, where vaccine technology is shared all over the world. When we invest in factories all over the global South, there's plenty of scope to make profit in such a system."

Germany's federal health agency, the Robert Koch Institute, has confirmed 33 cases of mpox in Berlin this year. That is a significant reduction from the last outbreak in 2022, when more than 1,500 cases were recorded for the same period. In Germany you can easily get an mpox vaccine from a doctor, but currently it will set you back 200 euros ($221)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against comparing mpox to COVID-19 in its global impact and reach. But Oxfam's Lawson is concerned that lessons on opening up access to medicines that should have been learnt during COVID have been forgotten.

He blasted: "They didn't want to open up their patents, they didn't want to threaten the profits of their pharmaceutical corporations. So we have the same broken system. Walking into another pandemic just a few years later is the definition of stupidity. And I think the European leadership played a huge part in being a problem here, just as they did in Covid-19."

The Danish company that makes the vaccine, Bavarian Nordic, has donated 40,000 doses to Africa's public health body. While the European Commission said the EU would be sending 215,00 doses from stockpiles to Africa, there remains no date for delivery. 

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