The World Health Organisation (WHO) has approved the LC16m8 smallpox vaccine produced by a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
The WHO has placed the monkeypox vaccine from Japanese company KM Biologics on the list of emergency medicines. The Japanese government will donate 3.05 million doses of the LC16m8 vaccine, complete with special needles for it, to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the WHO press office said.
The development of KM Biologics has become the second vaccine authorised by WHO to fight smallpox in monkeys. The first approval from the international organisation was given to the vaccine of Danish Bavarian Nordic after criticism for its untimely response to the epidemic.
The Japanese vaccine has been used successfully during previous outbreaks of monkeypox, proving safe and effective, including in HIV-positive patients with a controlled course of the disease.
This summer, WHO recognised the spread of monkeypox as a public health emergency for the second time in two years. The occasion was the migration of a new strain of the virus from the DRC to neighbouring states.
In 2024, the number of monkeypox cases on the African continent exceeded more than 50,500, of which 1,100 were fatal. The geography of the disease covered 80 countries, 19 of which are African.
