Rishard Khan

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) is hop­ing to pro­vide mon­key­pox vac­cines to the re­gion by the end of the year through the re­volv­ing fund, ac­cord­ing to di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Eti­enne said vac­cines have al­ready gone to some coun­tries.

“On Oc­to­ber 4, Brazil was the first coun­try to re­ceive an ini­tial ship­ment of 9,800 dos­es. Chile fol­lowed, re­ceiv­ing its first ship­ment last Thurs­day, Oc­to­ber 6,” she said, adding The Ba­hamas, Be­lize, Ecuador, El Sal­vador, Guyana, Hon­duras, Ja­maica, Pana­ma, Pe­ru and T&T have all ex­pressed in­ter­est in ac­quir­ing vac­cines.

“PA­HO is work­ing with these coun­tries and the man­u­fac­tur­er, Bavar­i­an Nordic, to com­plete re­quest­ed de­liv­er­ies by the end of the year, pro­vid­ed that the re­quire­ments are met,” she said.

T&T has placed an or­der for 2,000 dos­es of mon­key­pox vac­cines through PA­HO.

Eti­enne said the vac­cine sup­ply is still lim­it­ed, so vac­ci­na­tion among high-risk groups should be pri­ori­tised. How­ev­er, she said vac­cines aren’t the on­ly con­trol mech­a­nism for the dis­ease.

“Let’s not that vac­cines are an ad­di­tion­al tool to re­duce mon­key­pox trans­mis­sion. They should be used in con­junc­tion with sur­veil­lance, test­ing, and ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and en­gage­ment ef­forts to reach those that are most at risk of in­fec­tion,” she said.

She said over 45,000 cas­es have been re­port­ed in the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as.

She said over 45,000 cas­es have been re­port­ed in the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as which rep­re­sents 63 per cent of the cas­es re­port­ed glob­al­ly. She said 95 per cent of these re­port­ed cas­es are among men and 56 per cent have oc­curred in HIV-pos­i­tive in­di­vid­u­als.