DR Congo began its smallpox vaccination program in October after receiving 265,000 doses donated by the international community.
More than 50,000 people have been vaccinated so far – with the rollout focusing on communities most at risk, including towns and villages in eastern DR Congo.
But experts have noted that mpox appears to disproportionately affect children in the DR Congo – and they are unvaccinated. Just this week, the WHO approved a vaccine for children that is expected in Japan.
“Of the people affected, about 30% are children,” Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told the BBC, explaining that children “are also vectors.”
Another nurse at the Lwiro clinic, Jackson Murhula, warned that it was too early to say for sure that the disease in the community had been defeated – although he was also happy to see that things were easing.
“Recently it has started to slow down because we used to get 10 to 15 new cases a day and now we’re only getting two to three cases a day,” he said.
“We cannot confirm that we have completely stabilized the disease because cases are coming in, but it is not like before.”
Three-year-old Atukuzwe Banisa is among the children being treated this week.
He moans in pain, his eyes closed and his face covered in whitish marks left by the healing wounds.
His mother, Julien Mwinja, 25, says his symptoms started with watery eyes.
She instilled eye drops, but within a day the little boy had sores in his mouth, face and body.
“He looked like he’d been scalded with hot water,” the mother of three told the BBC.
It was then that she brought him to Lwiro Hospital where he stayed for over a week.
It is good for the Lwrio doctors that people now tend to come to the clinic as soon as they have symptoms, instead of going to traditional healers first.
