UNICEF has issued an emergency tender to secure mpox vaccines for crisis-hit countries in collaboration with the Gavi vaccine alliance, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and the WHO, the organizations said in a joint statement on Saturday.
Depending on the production capacity of manufacturers, agreements for up to 12 million doses through next year can be made, the organizations said.
Under the tender, UNICEF would set up conditional supply agreements with vaccine manufacturers, they said.
Photo: Reuters
This would enable UNICEF to purchase and ship vaccines without delay, once financing, demand, readiness and regulatory requirements are confirmed.
The collaboration — which would also include working with the Vaccine Alliance and the Pan American Health Organization — would facilitate donations of vaccines from existing stockpiles in high-income countries.
The statement added that WHO is reviewing information submitted by manufacturers on Aug. 23 and expects to complete a review for an emergency use listing by the middle of this month.
The agency is reviewing applications for emergency licenses for two vaccines made by Bavarian Nordic and Japan’s KM Biologics.
Earlier last month, the WHO declared mpox a global public health emergency following an outbreak of the viral infection in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that spread to neighboring countries.
More than 18,000 suspected cases of mpox have been reported in the nation so far this year with 629 deaths, while more than 150 cases have been confirmed in Burundi, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Sweden and Thailand have confirmed cases of the clade 1b type of the virus, outside of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring countries.
A museum in southern French city Marseille is inviting visitors to discover Europe’s relationship to the naturist lifestyle by wandering its halls in the nude. “It’s not every day you get to walk around a museum naked,” said Julie Guegnolle, 38, who was celebrating her birthday at the “Naturist Paradises” exhibition in the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem). Once a month, visitors to Mucem can explore the history of naturism in Europe in only their shoes — a precaution not for modesty’s sake but simply to “avoid getting splinters,” said Eric Stefanut, head of French naturist organization
SOVEREIGNTY ‘VIOLATION’: China was possibly probing Japan’s air defense network, seeking to obtain intelligence and putting pressure on Tokyo, analysts said Japan yesterday criticized what it called the first confirmed incursion by a Chinese military aircraft into its airspace as a “serious violation” of its sovereignty, saying Beijing was becoming “increasingly active.” China’s growing economic and military clout in the Asia-Pacific region and its assertiveness in territorial disputes — mostly with the Philippines — has rattled the US and its allies, and Monday’s incident represents a further heightening of tensions. Japan, Washington’s closest ally in the region, said it scrambled fighter jets after the two-minute incursion from 11:29am on Monday by the Y-9 surveillance aircraft off the Danjo Islands in the East China
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people