Rural, Remote DRC Lacks Solid Deep Cold Storage Facilities: Means Significant Spoilage of Precious Mpox Vaccine Stocks...

The Japanese company KM Biologics had, earlier this year, donated three million doses of its lyophilized Mpox vaccine LC16 to public health authorities in DRC. It had to be trucked for many days over tough jeep trail "roads" -- into the remote regions where the Clade 1b virus is flaring. But that is the beauty of vials of powdered vaccines -- they stay stable, even in 90 degree weather with 90 plus per cent humidity.

The rub though is that unlike here -- where deeply refrigerated cold boxes, inside clinics -- are the norm. . . none of that infrastructure exists in rural villages in the hilly forests of remote DRC. So, a standard powder vial containing 250 doses will mostly go to waste, if you only have 50 to 100 people to vaccinate, since once the sterile water is added, the shelf life in 80 plus degree weather is under a day -- maybe even only a few hours, if it is midday.

Here is that story from Reuters. My guess is it is likely not feasile, from a mass production / economic standpoint, to make five- or ten-dose "mini" vials -- and then give them away, for free. The materials costs then (for very small vials -- in the millions, per run) become very significant:

. . .Around a third of mpox vaccines donated by Japan to Democratic Republic of Congo are being wasted because they cannot be stored once prepared for use, the head of Congo's mpox response told Reuters.

Japan has donated three million doses of its LC16 vaccine to Congo to help fight a new form of mpox known as clade Ib, which spread internationally and sparked a global health emergency last year. The second tranche of 1.5 million doses arrived in Congo in September, around two years after the outbreak began. . . .

LC16, made by KM Biologics, is the only vaccine approved for children and is being given to children aged one and above as well as adults, but it is technically complex, requiring a specific needle and technique.

There are also challenges delivering the vaccine in some of the worst-affected provinces, which are remote or politically unstable, Kacita said. But the vaccine has still helped tackle mpox, particularly in Kinshasa [the densely populated capital city], he said. . . .

Now you know. And, separately, as early as this afternoon perhaps up to six hundred wrongfully-arrested people in and around Chicago (for lack of papers, alone) may begin to be released to their families on minimal bond -- by USDC Judge Cummings. Sweet. All of Bovino's lawlessness. . . is being undone. Onward!

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