The first 10,000 mpox vaccines are finally due to arrive this week in Africa, where a dangerous new strain of the virus — which has afflicted people there for decades — has caused global alarm.
The slow arrival of the shots — which have already been made available in more than 70 countries outside Africa — showed that lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic about global health care inequities have been slow to bring change, half a dozen public health officials and scientists said.
Among the hurdles: It took the World Health Organization (WHO) until this month to start officially the process needed to give poor countries easy access to large quantities of the vaccines via international agencies.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.