Vaccinating children under five-years-old in endemic mpox regions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would significantly reduce the number of deaths in the country, according to a new analysis by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health. The study, led by Gregg Gonsalves, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), and Alexandra Savinkina, a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) at YSPH, modeled different mpox vaccination strategies in the DRC to see which one was most effective. Mpox is an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus.
It was first identified in the DRC in 1970, with an unprecedented large outbreak occurring in 2023. Health officials say the virus is currently spreading at an alarming rate. More than 14,000 cases and 700 deaths from mpox occurred in the DRC in 2023, with 70% of those cases diagnosed in children.
So far in 2024, Congolese authorities have reported more than 31,000 suspected cases and nearly 1,000 deaths. But researchers suspect the actual total case number is much higher as mpox is largely underreported in the DRC, with only an estimated 41% of cases being documented. On August 14, 2024, the World Health Organization declared the current DRC mpox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, its highest level of global alert.
In the Yale study, researchers created a mathematical model to identify effective vaccination strategi.