| | | | |  | | By Carmen Paun and Daniel Payne | | | | WHY AFRICA DOESN'T HAVE MONKEYPOX SHOTS AND DRUGS — It's a familiar picture: There's a virus-causing disease in Africa for which a vaccine and treatments exist, but the countries most affected don't have them. That's the case for monkeypox, a lesions-causing virus that's infected people in West and Central Africa for decades but that most of the world is only hearing about now as it spreads in wealthy nations. Their governments are scrambling to buy shots and drugs as nearly 30 non-endemic countries reported more than 1,000 infections but no deaths. That threatens to perpetuate the lack of access in the countries where the virus is endemic, including the Democratic Republic of The Congo and Nigeria, which have together reported more than 1,200 cases this year. Most cases are in the DRC, where 57 people have died. "The communities that live with the threat of this virus every day deserve the same concern, the same care and the same access to tools to protect themselves," World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Wednesday. The monkeypox outbreak underscores the need to help African nations contain the virus — which doesn't just help the continent but the rest of the world.
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A medical laboratory technician picks up from a fridge a bucket with suspected monkeypox samples to be tested at the microbiology laboratory of La Paz Hospital on June 6, 2022, in Madrid, Spain. | Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images | What's taking so long? A combination of issues. Health authorities perceive monkeypox as causing low-risk disease, stock of the new vaccine and drugs is insufficient and they're still being studied in clinical trials, which means the 10 or so African countries where the virus is endemic haven't had access to the shot and treatment. The disease typically disappears on its own in a few weeks. Endemic countries have tried to identify cases early, isolate them and give people drugs to alleviate their symptoms, said Fiona Braka, the team lead for emergency operations at the WHO's Africa branch. But people at high risk of severe disease , such as those living with HIV/AIDS and others who are immunocompromised, could benefit from treatment or vaccination, the head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Ifedayo Adetifa, told Global Pulse. His country has started discussions to obtain access to the vaccine and drugs everyone is now seeking. But Adetifa is concerned that the Covid-19 pandemic lessons about equitable vaccine and treatment access haven't been fully heeded. "In the global connected world, it's important that we all work together" to stop outbreaks where they happen and not resort to travel bans or locking up people, he said. The WHO is trying to scale up production of the vaccine manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, which is approved for smallpox and monkeypox in the U.S., Braka said. It's also trying to find out the amount of vaccines countries have stockpiled and hopes to coordinate their equitable distribution. Discussions with officials from countries where monkeypox is endemic have not led so far to any demand for the monkeypox vaccine, said a Bavarian Nordic spokesperson.
| | | WELCOME BACK TO GLOBAL PULSE, where we congratulate the country that no longer sounds like a bird. Global Pulse is a team effort. Thanks to editors Eli Reyes and Barbara Van Tine. Follow us on Twitter: @_daniel_payne and @carmenpaun.
| | | WHERE ARE THE DOSES? Though many countries have plenty of smallpox doses to go around, newer vaccines — much preferred to handle monkeypox because they're safer — are in short supply. Bavarian Nordic's is in high demand from governments worldwide, the company said. "Several million" doses are available for sale, Rolf Sass Sørensen, head of investor relations and communications at the company, told reporters Tuesday. But the U.S. announced this week it has a relatively large number of doses at its disposal: 36,000 in its stockpile and 36,000 more to be delivered this week. What's more, the government owns more than 1 million doses held by Bavarian Nordic — as well as the materials to manufacture over 16 million more. That's a far larger number than most countries have announced. The EU has yet to release details about potential orders but is working out the details with member countries and manufacturers, a spokesperson told Global Pulse. Some countries have announced far fewer doses on hand, like the U.K. government, which told Global Pulse it had purchased more than 20,000 doses. And some countries haven't ordered any yet. A spokesperson for the South African Minister of Health said the country hasn't had any known cases of the virus and therefore hasn't ordered any of the vaccines.
| | | | | "Global health was neither diverse nor global even before the pandemic, but now, there is a real risk that all global health events will start resembling Davos - elite, white people getting together in North American or European cities, to discuss issues that mostly impact Black and brown people in [lower- and middle-income countries]."
Madhukar Pai, a Canada research chair of epidemiology and global health at McGill University in Montreal, writing in Forbes about passport and visa privileges in global health. | | | | | |  Covid-19 response efforts across the Americas exposed a health system unprepared for major disease outbreaks. | Getty Images | A PLAN TO STRENGTHEN HEALTH SYSTEMS IN THE AMERICAS — On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced a plan to improve the health infrastructure in Latin America — including funds to further train half a million health workers over the next five years, according to senior administration officials. The new program, called the Americas Health Corp, which will also include funding and programs from the Pan American Health Organization, among other groups, plans to use $100 million to build up health systems, aspiring to strengthen systems that care for human and environmental health alike — as well as working to end the Covid-19 pandemic's acute phase. The plan will be fully implemented by 2030, the officials said, and will strengthen existing programs, including bolstering lab partnerships across the region and diversifying supply chains. It was announced at the Summit of the Americas, which several leaders boycotted after Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela weren't invited.
| | | UNCERTAINTY SURROUNDS QUAD VACCINE INITIATIVE — Remember when the Biden administration committed to supporting Indian pharma company Biological E to produce 1 billion Covid-19 vaccines by year's end? At six months before the deadline, that initiative's status is unclear. Global Pulse was bounced around when we reached out to all entities involved to get an update. The history: Biological E was supposed to manufacture some of Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccines as part of the 1 billion doses. The White House announced the plan in March 2021 after a virtual meeting among the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. — the so-called Quad. The responses: Biological E referred all questions about it to J&J, which said: "It is premature for us to speculate on the timing of our vaccine." A U.S. senior administration official suggested the problem lies with regulatory approval. When we asked Biological E whether it requested WHO approval to produce the J&J vaccine, a spokesperson said the company wasn't able to comment on the issue. The WHO list of applications doesn't include a request from Biological E for that vaccine. Instead, it lists a so-called expression of interest for Biological E to manufacture Corbevax, avaccine developed by U.S.-based scientists and approved in India last year. But that's not an application for assessment, according to the WHO. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which is financing the expansion of Biological E's vaccine manufacturing capacity, can't speak about the contract between the company in India and J&J. But Biological E's expanded vaccine manufacturing capacity can be used to produce more childhood vaccines and other shots for which it has regulatory approval, Nafisa Jiwani, the DFC's managing director for health initiatives, told Global Pulse. What's really happening? The project to produce 1 billion Covid vaccines is floundering, The Hindu reported. The plan to produce J&J shots ran into trouble over indemnity issues, as the Indian government refused to sign a liability waiver to indemnify J&J against lawsuits over adverse side effects, according to the report. The FDA's decision to limit the shot's use in the U.S. over concerns of rare blood clots and a decreased demand for Covid vaccines worldwide seemed to have also thrown a wrench in the works. Those troubles underscore the difficulty of scaling up vaccine production during a health emergency amid evolving demand, virus changes and vaccine market developments.
| | | | INTRODUCING DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED: Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | | | 82 MILLION The number of Covid vaccine doses wasted in the U.S. since vaccination started in December 2020, according to the CDC. | | | | | NPR: Lebanon's hospitals are running out of medicine and staff in the ongoing economic crisis. Financial Times : Europe risks measles outbreak as children miss out on vaccines, head of European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control warns. CNN: Unburied bodies and contaminated drinking water spark fears of cholera outbreak in Mariupol. Reuters: After lockdown, Shanghai tries to mend fences with foreign firms.
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