Mpox in DR Congo: BBC visits mpox clinic as WHO says cases ‘plateauing’

DR Congo started its mpox vaccination programme in October after taking delivery of 265,000 doses donated by the international community.

More than 50,000 people have been vaccinated so far – with the rollout focused on communities most at risk, including towns and villages in the eastern DR Congo.

But experts have noted that mpox appears to be disproportionately affecting children in DR Congo – and they are not being vaccinated. It was only this week that the WHO authorised a vaccine expected from Japan for children.

“Out of the people affected, about 30% are children,” Dr Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told the BBC – explaining that children were “also vectors of transmission”.

Another nurse at the Lwiro clinic, Jackson Murhula, warned that it was too early to say for sure the disease in the community had been beaten – though he too was happy to see things easing.

“Lately it’s started to slow down, because at the beginning we were receiving 10 or 15 new cases a day, but now we’re only receiving two or three cases a day,” he said.

“We can’t confirm that we’ve totally stabilised the disease, because cases are still coming in, but it’s not like before.”

Among the children being treated this week is three-year-old Atukuzwe Banissa.

He groans in pain, his eyes shut and face covered in whitish spots left behind by the healing sores.

His mother, 25-year-old Julienne Mwinja, says his symptoms began with teary eyes.

She administered eye drops, but within a day, the little boy developed sores in his mouth, face and body.

“He looked like he’d been scalded by hot water,” the mother of three told the BBC.

That is when she brought him to Lwiro hospital where he was admitted for more than a week.

For the medics at Lwrio, it is heartening that people are now tending to come to the clinic as soon as they get symptoms rather than first going to traditional healers.