Africa’s public health agency says countries with deadly cholera outbreaks on the continent have no “immediate access” to vaccines amid a global supply shortage.
The acting director of the Africa Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Ahmed Ogwell, told journalists on Thursday that the
agency is working with the World Health Organization and the vaccine alliance
GAVI on ways to obtain more doses.
The Africa CDC is also working with two local manufacturers
to explore if their facilities can be repurposed to manufacture cholera
vaccines, Ogwell said. He didn’t say which ones.
WHO and its partners recommended in October that countries
temporarily switch to using a single dose of the cholera vaccine instead of two
because of the supply shortage as outbreaks of the water-borne disease surge
globally. They said one dose of vaccine has proven effective in stopping
outbreaks “even though evidence on the exact duration of protection is limited”
and appears to be lower in children.
WHO noted that Haiti and Syria also are trying to contain
large outbreaks. WHO and partner agencies manage a stockpile of cholera
vaccines that are dispensed free to countries that need them.
Malawi in southern Africa especially is struggling with a
cholera outbreak. The country has recorded 3,577 new cases including 111 deaths
in the past week, Ogwell said. They make up the bulk of the new cholera cases
on the continent.
Since the beginning of 2023, there have been 27,300 new
cases of cholera including 687 deaths in five African countries, Ogwell said.
The WHO has said climate change could make cholera epidemics
more common, as the bacteria that causes the disease can reproduce more quickly
in warmer water.
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