After two years of post-Covid talks, member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) failed this summer to agree plans for a more equitable distribution of vaccines to developing countries. Ensuring that life-saving doses are available to countries most in need of them, rather than merely to those with the deepest pockets, is not only a moral imperative. It is in the self-interest of every nation, given the propensity of viruses to mutate and migrate. But achieving this requires big money and big concessions from pharmaceutical firms. And so, dispiritingly, the haggling goes on.
Maybe the warnings over a new, more severe strain of mpox in Africa will finally concentrate minds. Last week, the WHO declared the current outbreak of the virus “a public health emergency of international concern”. Highly contagious, mpox can be spread through skin-on-skin contact, the sharing of contaminated materials and contact with animals. The new “clade 1” variant appears to have a significantly higher mortality rate of about 4%. Cases have now been detected in 13 African countries, the overwhelming majority in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). More than 500 people have died so far.
