LONDON (Reuters) - Vaccines and treatments that could help tackle an mpox epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo are lying unused outside the country despite a death rate far higher than from the global outbreak that began last year.
Stigma, regulatory hurdles and competing disease outbreaks are all factors holding back the response, according to almost a dozen scientists, public health officials and drugmakers involved.
Since January, at least 581 people have died of mpox in Congo out of 12,569 suspected cases, compared to 167 deaths among 91,788 reported cases in 116 other countries since January 2022, according to the World Health Organization.
Mpox is a viral infection that spreads through close contact and causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled skin lesions.
The WHO sent a team to the country last month to help the authorities there, but there are still no treatments or vaccines available for use in Congo outside of clinical trials. A team working for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) in one district confirmed the lack of specific tools to fight the disease.
That is in part because the government in Congo, one of the world's poorest countries, has not asked to buy any or applied for donations, according to representatives from the drugmakers as well as from high-income countries with stockpiles.
