Nigeria has commenced the long-awaited Mpox vaccination drive on Monday, as healthcare workers and individuals with poor immune systems in hospitals receives their dose across Abuja.
According to Reuter, it was acknowledged that this rollout comes over a month behind schedule.
The country, Africa’s most populous, received its first batch of 10,000 vaccine doses from the United States in August.
The delivery followed the World Health Organization’s renewed declaration of mpox as a global public health emergency – the second in two years.
Mpox is endemic in Nigeria, which has reported 94 confirmed cases so far this year, with no recorded fatalities, according to the WHO’s update last month.
At the Federal Medical Centre in Abuja, medical personnel kitted up with gloves and masks while they administered the first doses to 30 recipients, marking the start of the programme.
“It is not a mass vaccination. It’s a 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 told Reuter in Abuja.
Hardley Ikwe of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention stated that the initial phase of the programme will last 10 days.
It will focus on Abuja and seven states, including Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, and Rivers, which have reported several cases.
The WHO recently allocated 899,000 vaccine doses for nine African nations most affected by the mpox outbreak, signaling an effort to curb the virus on the continent.
