MEDICS at the epicentre of the mpox outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have told the BBC there has been a notable reduction in new infections since the first batch of vaccines were rolled out last month.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed to the BBC that new cases appeared to be “plateauing” in DR Congo, but cautioned that it was too early to tell the impact of vaccinations.
Mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – is a highly contagious disease and is suspected to have killed at least 900 people in DR Congo this year.
WHO officials confirmed mpox remains a global public health emergency, the highest alert for any major outbreak.
Other public health experts in Africa have warned the disease is still spreading, with 19 countries in the continent reporting infections.
In September the BBC visited a clinic in Lwiro, a rural area about an hour’s drive outside the city of Bukavu in DR Congo’s eastern province of South Kivu.
The cases there have been linked to a relatively new and more severe strain of mpox known as Clade 1b, which appears to spread more easily and cause more serious disease.
Two months ago, we found the community hospital overwhelmed – with long queues of infected patients, many forced to share beds or mattresses on the floor and doctors struggling to cope with the numbers arriving each day.
“Right now, we can’t have more than 60 patients in the hospital,” nurse Emmanuel Fikiri, who has been on the front line of the mpox crisis for months, told the BBC this week.
“This is due to the fact that there has been an improvement, there has been vaccination against mpox and there has been support from several partners who have enabled us to take care of the patients,” he said.
When Mr Fikiri last spoke to the BBC he could only talk briefly as he rushed off to treat some of the nearly 200 patients who were then crammed into the wards.
But he is now much more optimistic about the situation given that vaccine take up in the community has been high – meaning new infections appear to have dropped dramatically.
Indeed when a BBC producer visited the Lwiro hospital earlier this week we found a much calmer scene: the long queues had gone and there were some empty beds in the children’s ward.