As the global discussion intensifies about ways to combat the spread of monkeypox in Africa, which has now reached Sweden, vaccination campaigns appear to be at the forefront of the options. In Morocco, the debate returns to the question of “citizens’ willingness” to receive doses if a “monkeypox vaccination campaign” is launched, following the experience with “COVID-19.”
In Europe, the European Public Health Authority has decided to raise the “alert level” after Sweden detected its first case. The Danish company “Bavarian Nordic” announced in a statement on Saturday its “intention to increase the production of the monkeypox vaccine.”
According to European media sources, the same Danish company “informed African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of its capacity to manufacture about ten million doses of the monkeypox vaccine by the end of 2025, with plans to deliver one million doses in the coming months.”
A report by “Euronews” stated that “vaccine company stocks rose this week with growing global fears of monkeypox spreading beyond Africa.”
In Canada, the Public Health Agency in Toronto urged eligible residents to get vaccinated against monkeypox after the World Health Organization declared it a “global health emergency.”
According to the circular of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection on Saturday, “the ministry called on regional and local health officials to ensure the urgent implementation of these measures, in a participatory approach with all health structures, public and private, in the regions they manage, and with all relevant and intervening parties at the local level.”
The ministry’s latest figures on COVID-19 surveillance indicate that “the number of first doses of vaccination amounts to about 25 million, while the fourth dose does not exceed 61,000 doses.”
Khaled Fathi, a health expert and professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in Rabat, said, “The difference between monkeypox and COVID-19 is vast in all directions.”
Fathi added that “it is unlikely that there will be resistance in Morocco to taking the monkeypox vaccine if a national campaign is launched because it is a tested vaccine that has given results and completed all testing phases.”
The health expert stated that the global vaccine stockpile against monkeypox is “small, and perhaps its future spread will push developed countries to make efforts to provide it, as happened during the COVID era,” stressing that “for Morocco, such scenarios are still distant, and launching a national vaccination campaign is also unlikely, and no one wishes it.”
With the availability of awareness and reliable numbers from the World Health Organization, Fathi emphasized that “the efforts of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection and various stakeholders, if Morocco enters a vaccination scenario, will not have difficulty convincing citizens of it, especially since the vaccine is tested and trusted and took many years to come to production, unlike the COVID vaccine.”
According to the World Health Organization, “three vaccines against monkeypox have previously been approved, namely: (MVA-BN, LC16, and Orthopox Vac),” stressing that “the preliminary results from several studies conducted on the efficacy of the monkeypox vaccine are promising and indicate a good level of protection.”
On social media, a number of Moroccan activists wrote that they “will not receive doses of the monkeypox vaccine and that they will not repeat the COVID experience.”
For Mohamed Aroua, a general practitioner and general secretary of the Democratic Organization for Health, the monkeypox vaccine is “tested, and it is not new in Morocco and the world.”
Aroua added in a statement to Hespress that this vaccine “has no serious side effects, and many people were vaccinated with it in childhood stages, meaning that there is no problem with Moroccans accepting it if a vaccination campaign is launched.”
The same speaker noted that the cases detected in Morocco “indicate that the situation is good and does not yet require a vaccination campaign, but citizens must adhere to the usual preventive measures.”
He continued: “With the guidelines of the Ministry of Health, after the last meeting, it appears that Morocco is ready at any moment to provide the vaccine to face scenarios of monkeypox spread,” stating that “this matter, excluding the possibility of citizens’ reluctance.”
