“I have written to EU Health Ministers about the plans to donate vaccines and therapeutics against the mpox virus. Global solidarity is essential to address global health threats,” wrote the European Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides, in a post on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

“We count on Member States to support our African partners in managing the outbreak,” and “the Commission is ready to coordinate” the mobilization, added the official.

In the letter, shared on the same social network, Stella Kyriakides argued that, given the outbreak in several African countries, it is necessary to “act together, in a coordinated and sustained manner”.

After the EU executive had already organised the mobilisation of 215,000 doses of vaccines, the official admitted that “the doses needed to combat the current outbreak are, evidently, much higher”.

“Several Member States and third countries have announced their intention to donate doses to the affected countries and to Africa. European donations will have a more immediate impact if they are coordinated and channelled using the [joint initiative] Team Europe approach, already tried and tested, as was done successfully during the Covid-19 pandemic”, she added.

With the letter, Stella Kyriakides then asks that, by the end of August, countries notify Brussels of their “intention to donate vaccines and therapies against the mpox virus and the volumes available for donation”.

The position comes after a technical meeting last week in Brussels in response to the international public health emergency declared by the WHO in light of the current outbreak of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at which no new measures were decided.

A week ago, after the first imported case in Europe, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimated that it was “highly likely” that the EU would have more imported cases of mpox, after the new variant appeared in that case detected in Sweden imported from Africa.

Even so, according to the European centre, the probability of sustained transmission in Europe is very low, as long as imported cases are diagnosed quickly and control measures are implemented.

Also at that time, the Directorate-General for Health clarified that none of the cases of mpox reported in Portugal are of the most dangerous variant of the disease (clade I).

Shortly after Sweden recorded the first case of a more contagious and dangerous variant of the disease, the WHO warned of the possibility of other imported cases of mpox being detected in Europe.

In mid-August, the WHO had already declared the mpox outbreak in Africa a global health emergency, with confirmed cases among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new variant in circulation.