By Camillus Eboh
ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria started mpox vaccinations on Monday, administering shots to health workers and people with weak immune systems at hospitals in the capital Abuja, more than a month after the programme was scheduled to start.
Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria received its first batch of 10,000 doses of the mpox vaccine from the United States in August after the World Health Organisation declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years.
Nigeria, one of the African countries where mpox is endemic, has recorded 94 confirmed cases and no deaths since the start of this year, the WHO said in a report last month.
At the Federal Medical Centre in Abuja, health workers wearing gloves and masks administered mpox shots to 30 people, marking the start of the vaccination campaign.
“It is not a mass vaccination but target-ringed vaccination for health care workers and immuno-compromised persons, that is, people living with HIV,” Hafsat Abdullazeez from the Institute of Human Virology in Abuja told Reuters.
Hardley Ikwe of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control said the initial vaccination programme would last 10 days, focusing on Abuja and seven states, including oil-producing Akwa Ibom, Baylesa and Rivers, where several cases have been recorded.
An initial 899,000 vaccine doses have been allocated for nine countries across Africa hit hardest by the mpox surge, the WHO said this month.
(Writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe, editing by Ed Osmond)
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