When a vaccine arrived in December of that year, he felt some relief. But also fear. “I had seen what COVID can do to people my parents’ age,” Titanji said. “I was absolutely terrified because from the time I had access to the vaccination to the time my parents had access to the vaccination, it was eight months.” In Cameroon, where Titanji is from, her parents didn’t get their first coronavirus shot until August 2021. By then, most Canadian and American adults were well past their second shots.
“It was the scariest experience of living with the fear of contracting COVID,” he said. Despite the World Health Organization’s calls for rich countries to stop stockpiling COVID vaccines and share them with lower-income countries – especially in Africa – health experts agree we’ve failed. Dr. Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, an infectious disease specialist in Atlanta, says there were no vaccines or antiviral drugs available when she encountered monkeypox in her home country of Cameroon. (Boghuma Kabisen Titanji) Nor are they surprised, because the same uneven distribution of vaccines and treatments has been a pattern for decades. On July 23, the said the WHO monkeypox one “public health emergency of international concernAnd doctors fear the same pattern will repeat itself as Canada, the US and European countries rush to vaccinate at-risk populations. They use a vaccine that was originally made for smallpox, which has been eradicated. In Canada, it’s called Imvamune, and small amounts were stockpiled years ago in case smallpox ever returned. Imvamune is also approved to vaccinate people against monkeypox. However, monkeypox has been endemic in several African countries for 50 years. Dozens have died this year alone, Titanji said, but no vaccine has ever been made available except in targeted studies involving health care workers.
When dealing with monkeypox outbreaks in Cameroon, he also said there was no access to antiviral drugs to treat the disease. “If you diagnose someone with smallpox [in Africa], provide supportive care. So basically you make the diagnosis and tell them to isolate themselves and, you know, take paracetamol for their fever… and rest and recover.” Although anyone can become infected through close contact with someone who has monkeypox or through personal items such as bedding, in countries outside of Africa, the population most at risk right now is men who have sex with men. In Africa, it has historically been spread mainly through contact with infected animals.

Lack of concern about disease in Africa

If a pandemic the scale of COVID didn’t prompt a global response that was fair, Titanji said, she’s skeptical that the response to monkeypox — not to mention future outbreaks of other diseases — will treat Africa differently. “The point is that there has been a generalized neglect of health acuity in Africa,” said Dr. Githinji Gitahi, head of Amref Health Africa, a Toronto-based group working to improve access to health care across the continent. “The view is that as long as the health threats are confined to African communities, it’s OK for people not to worry.” WHO has 31 million doses of smallpox vaccine (effective against smallpox), mostly held in donor countries & intended as a rapid response to any re-emergence of the disease, which was declared eradicated in 1980. No doses have ever been released for any smallpox outbreaks monkeys in Africa —@daktari1 But if rich countries want to end epidemics affecting their citizens, it is in their best interest to ensure that low- and middle-income nations have the resources to stop the spread of the disease, Gitahi said. “Pandemics and disease threats start in a community,” he said. “If you have a community that is not secure, the whole world is not secure in our current connectivity.” “This must change not only for monkeypox but also for other neglected diseases in low-income countries, as the world is reminded once again that health is an interconnected proposition,” said the WHO chief.

What is the solution?

One of the things that needs to change is the monopoly that rich countries maintain on vaccines and drugs, including antivirals, African doctors and global health experts said. During COVID-19, donations through the COVAX vaccine sharing program helped, but they reached African countries too late, Gitahi said. “People died waiting for vaccines.” In many cases, the vaccines were useless because they landed with “too little shelf life left.” Furthermore, by the time they arrived, people who would have previously lined up to be vaccinated had lost both a sense of urgency and trust in the health care system, with the perception that they were getting vaccines rejected by rich countries, Gitahi added. . . LISTEN | African doctors say the monkeypox response is another example of vaccine disparity: CBC News2:44 African doctors say response to monkeypox is another example of vaccine disparity Health experts say they are skeptical that the world has learned from COVID-19 as wealthy countries grapple with monkeypox outbreaks. (CBC The World This Weekend) The way forward even for low- and middle-income countries, some experts say, is to remove intellectual property protections on basic vaccines and treatments. Rich countries are investing huge sums of money in vaccine companies in emergency situations, Titanji said. That gives them leverage to condition funding on giving lower- and middle-income countries an equal chance to buy them at a fair price, he said. Dr. Mary Stephen, technical officer at the WHO Regional Office in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, says it is critical to develop Africa’s capacity to manufacture its own vaccines and therapeutics. (Dr. Mary Stephen) But an even better solution, experts said, is to ensure that Africa is able to mount its own emergency responses to outbreaks, rather than being forced to wait for charities and rich nations to act.
“If we want to build a resilient system, there is much, much, much more to do than just donating vaccines,” said Dr. Mary Stephen, technical officer in the Health Emergencies Program at the WHO Regional Office in Brazzaville, Republic of. Congo. “Imagine if… countries on the continent could produce their own PPE, could produce their own laboratory reagents, their own test kits. [If] they were able to produce vaccines, medicines… it will go a long way,” he said. An important step in building this self-reliance was the opening of the “mRNA Vaccine Hub for Africa” ​​in Cape Town, South Africa, with the support of the WHO. Scientists there produced the first batches of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.
As Africa works towards healthcare self-sufficiency, it is important for the world to remember that the continent has already made significant contributions to global health, Titanji said. For example, African participants in many clinical trials have enabled the development of HIV/AIDS treatments that patients in rich countries receive, he said. Now that the world is facing monkeypox, Africa has decades of knowledge about the virus that wealthy nations rely on, Titanji said. “It’s 50 years of research by African scientists, sometimes with incredible challenges to publish that data,” he said of monkeypox studies, including one on health workers in the Congo that tested the effectiveness of the Imvamune vaccine.
“We’re building on that now so we can deal with outbreaks in non-endemic countries, all the while leaving behind the very people who contributed to this body of knowledge.”