[ad_1]
The European Commission on Tuesday signed an agreement with the Danish pharmaceutical company “Bavarian Nordic” for over 110,000 doses of vaccines to fight the ongoing outbreak of monkey pox.
Unlike COVID-19 vaccines, which were contracted by the European Commission but paid for individually by EU countries, the monkeypox vaccine contract will be funded initially from the EU common budget.
This is the first time that the EU budget is being used to purchase vaccines so that they can be distributed to member countries as soon as possible.
As of May 18 this year, around 900 cases of smallpox have been reported in 19 EU countries, Norway and Iceland.
The first shipment of doses will start at the end of June, in those countries that need it most.
Monkey pox is a virus that originates in wildlife, such as rodents and primates, and that sometimes spreads to humans. It belongs to the same family of smallpox viruses.
The first human infection occurred in 1970 in a boy in a remote area of Congo. In 2003, 47 people in six US states became infected with wild dogs living near some small mammals imported from Ghana. The WHO estimates that there are already thousands of such cases a year mainly in African countries and that this disease can be fatal for 1 in 10 people.
Most patients infected with monkeypox have only fever, body aches, fever, and fatigue.
More severely ill people may have skin irritation on the face and hands that may spread to other parts of the body./ REL
top channel
[ad_2]
Source link
