Eastern DR Congo receives sanitary equipment for mpox

A nurse stands next to a newly created mpox isolation ward at a civil hospital in Ahmedabad on September 10, 2024. [AFP]

Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has received its first delivery of sanitary equipment to deal with the mpox outbreak, local authorities told AFP on Wednesday.

The eastern region has been affected by an mpox variant that is worrying international health authorities.

Five tonnes of drugs, protective kits for healthcare workers and disinfectant solution arrived by aeroplane in Goma on Tuesday, the office of the governor of North Kivu province told AFP.

Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, has around a million inhabitants and is virtually surrounded by an armed rebellion, with hundreds of thousands of people crowded into the outskirts.

"Our greatest concern is the displaced person’s camps," Doctor Gaston Lubambo, chief medical officer of the provincial health department told AFP.

A total of 194 cases have been recorded since June in North Kivu, without any deaths, according to Lubambo.

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In neighbouring South Kivu, almost 6,000 cases and 35 deaths have been recorded since the start of the year, according to Justin Bengenya from the provincial health department.

This is more than a quarter of the total number of infections recorded in the whole country.

The DRC is at the epicentre of the latest outbreak and has recorded more than 21,500 cases and 700 deaths, according to the public health institute in charge of managing the epidemic in the country.

A number of mpox epidemics are currently present in Africa.

But the situation in DRC has become complicated with the appearance of variant Clade 1b.

It is difficult to assess how dangerous and contagious this variant is, specialists say.

DRC -- one of the five poorest countries in the world according to the World Bank -- has been receiving vaccine donations from the European Union and United States since last week.

Some 265,000 vaccine doses have arrived by plane into the capital city Kinshasa.

But these vaccines still need to be deployed across the country, which is four times the size of France, in preparation for a vaccination campaign that the government says is due to begin next month.

In Africa, mpox is now present in at least 14 countries, including Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic, according to Africa CDC figures.