The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the MVA-BN vaccine as the first vaccine against mpox to be added to its prequalification list. The vaccine has been manufactured by Bavarian Nordic.
About MVA-BN vaccine
- The prequalification approval is expected to facilitate timely and increased access to this vital product in communities with urgent need, to reduce transmission and help contain the outbreak.
- The MVA-BN vaccine can be administered in people over 18-years of age as a 2-dose injection given 4 weeks apart.
- After prior cold storage, the vaccine can be kept at 2–8°C for up to 8 weeks.
- Available data shows that a single-dose MVA-BN vaccine given before exposure has an estimated 76% effectiveness in protecting people against mpox, with the 2-dose schedule achieving an estimated 82% effectiveness.
- Vaccination after exposure is less effective than pre-exposure vaccination.
- The escalating mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries was declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) by the WHO Director-General on 14 August 2024.
Mpox
- Mpox is an illness caused by the monkeypox virus, a species of the genus Orthopoxvirus.
- It is a viral infection which can spread between people, mainly through close contact, and occasionally from the environment to people via things and surfaces that have been touched by a person with mpox.
- The virus can also spread during pregnancy to the fetus.
- There are two broad clades of the virus: clade I and II. Clade II was behind the global mpox outbreak that began in 2022.
- The monkeypox virus was discovered in Denmark (1958) in monkeys kept for research.
- The first reported human case of mpox was a nine-month-old boy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1970).
