Kinshasa, DR Congo Mpox cases and deaths are rising in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as the central African country awaits vaccines from the United States and Japan, the health minister said on Monday.

The toll this year has risen in a few days from 16,000 cases and 548 deaths to 16,700 cases and “a little more than 570” deaths, Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said.

“We are talking about a continental emergency,” Kamba told a press briefing as the World Health Organisation (WHO) called on affected countries to step up vaccination programmes to counter a more deadly strain of mpox.

The WHO on Wednesday declared the mpox surge in Africa a global public health emergency. Outbreaks have been reported in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July. A case of the new strain has also been detected in Sweden.

The United States has promised 50,000 vaccine doses for DRC, while Japan on Monday agreed Monday to send 3.5 million doses, “only for children,” a medical source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The source said that DRC “plans to vaccinate four million people including 3.5 million children”.

“I hope by the next week we will already be able to see the vaccines arriving,” Kamba said.

“The vaccine is a solution to our problems,” he added, urging people to get jabbed.

“Our strategic vaccination plan is ready. We are just waiting for the vaccines to arrive.”

WHO calls for vaccines

Cases have now surfaced in all 26 provinces in the country of around 100 million people.

The WHO has declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern” — its highest alert category.

On Monday it released updated guidelines on countering the surge, including by “the agile adaptation of immunization strategies and plans to concerned areas”.

It called on countries to “scale up efforts to thoroughly investigate cases and outbreaks of mpox disease” to understand its transmission and prevent the spread “to household members and communities”.

Health authorities must report new cases on a weekly basis and “identify, monitor and support the contacts of people with mpox to prevent onward transmission,” it said.

It added that countries had to be ready to provide food and other support for mpox patients “including, as warranted and possible, isolation in care centres and guidance for home-based care”.

An mpox treatment centre at a hospital near the Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma The WHO said there has to be greater “cross-border collaboration” to monitor and handle suspected mpox cases “without resorting to general travel and trade restrictions unnecessarily impacting local, regional or national economies”.

While mpox has been known for decades, a new more deadly and more transmissible strain — clade 1b — causes death in about 3.6 percent of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO.

Kamba said that mpox is reaching “more and more young people” in DRC and there are a lot of children under 15 who have been affected.

A total of 18,737 suspected or confirmed cases of mpox were reported in Africa since the beginning of the year, including 1,200 cases in one week, the African Union health agency said Saturday.

Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research.

It was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.

Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.

The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.