Reuters Around a third of mpox vaccines donated by Japan to the Democratic Republic of Congo are being wasted because they cannot be stored once prepared for use, the head of Congo’s mpox response told Reuters.
Japan has donated three million doses of its LC16 vaccine to Congo to help fight a new form of mpox known as clade Ib, which spread internationally and sparked a global health emergency last year. The second tranche of 1.5 million doses arrived in Congo in September, around two years after the outbreak began. Congo began vaccinating with LC16 in Kinshasa in August and more than half a million people have now been vaccinated with either LC16 or Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine, Cris Kacita, Congo’s mpox lead, said, although some data is outstanding.