Nigeria’s delayed mpox vaccination program finally began Monday, more than a month behind schedule, as health workers administered the first shots to medical staff and immunocompromised patients in the capital’s hospitals.
The belated rollout comes despite Nigeria receiving 10,000 vaccine doses from the United States in August, following the World Health Organization’s second declaration of mpox as a global public health emergency in two years. The country, where mpox is endemic, has recorded 94 confirmed cases without fatalities this year, according to WHO data.
At the Federal Medical Centre in Abuja, healthcare workers wearing protective gear administered shots to 30 people, marking the delayed start of a targeted vaccination strategy. “It is not a mass vaccination but target-ringed vaccination for health care workers and immuno-compromised persons, that is, people living with HIV,” explained Hafsat Abdullazeez from the Institute of Human Virology in Abuja.
The postponed program will run for an initial 10 days, focusing on Abuja and seven states, including oil-producing regions where cases have clustered, according to Hardley Ikwe of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control.
The delayed implementation reflects broader challenges in rolling out urgent public health initiatives across Africa, even as the WHO allocates 899,000 vaccine doses for the nine countries most affected by the mpox surge on the continent.
