Status: 08/02/2022 10:11 a.m
The chairman of the Montgomery World Medical Association considers better education about monkeypox necessary – and more openness in dealing with the infections. The federal government is not ordering any further vaccines for the time being.
The Chairman of the Board of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, has spoken out in favor of better informing the population about monkeypox. “What we need are good, understandable educational campaigns – both for groups of people at risk and for the entire population,” Montgomery told the newspapers of the editorial network Germany (RND). In his view, there is “no reason at all” for stigmatizing people with monkeypox.
“The stigmatization of sick people must be counteracted as a matter of urgency, since only then is effective containment possible,” said Henritte Neumeyer, deputy chairwoman of the German Hospital Society, in an RND interview. “We must be clear that education and prevention are particularly important now and that early access to diagnostic and therapeutic options is essential,” Neumeyer continued.
The goal must be to stop the further spread in order to protect vulnerable groups in particular, such as people with weak immune systems. “Infections must be recognized quickly, and we urgently need to expand the vaccination options for risk groups,” Neumeyer is quoted as saying.
Empty ampoules of Bavarian Nordic (Imvanex /Jynneos) vaccine against monkeypox.
Image: dpa
Aidshilfe insists on ordering more vaccine doses
The federal government has meanwhile made it clear that it does not want to order any further doses of the monkeypox vaccine for the time being. That is “currently not planned,” a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Health told the RND newspapers. “Currently, only the vaccine Jynneos from the company Bavarian Nordics is available for immunization against monkeypox,” she continued.
The current challenge is that global demand for the vaccine exceeds supply and the manufacturer’s ability to deliver is temporarily limited.
The German Aidshilfe recently called for one million vaccine doses against monkeypox in Germany. So far, the federal government has only ordered a quarter of this number. “The federal government has ordered a total of 240,000 doses of the Jynneos/Imvanex vaccine as part of a national procurement, of which the first tranche of 40,000 vaccine doses of Jynneos vaccine was delivered to the federal central warehouse in mid-June,” said the ministry spokeswoman. “The remaining 200,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine from national procurement are expected in September 2022.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global health emergency because of monkeypox. Since the beginning of May, more than 18,000 cases of monkeypox have been registered outside Africa, most of them in Europe. Recently there have also been several deaths related to the virus: in Africa, where the disease was first detected in humans in 1970, Spain, India, Brazil and Peru. Men who have sex with other men are particularly affected by infections.