We already knew there was no such thing as a pandemic to bring to light all the problems that are driving our health systems, our manufacturing structures, and ultimately our societies, because we learned the worst. What we did not expect was that so soon after COVID, another outbreak made it clear that we learned almost nothing. But that’s how it is.

If we have 12 million doses of monkeypox vaccine and the World Health Organization estimates we need between four and ten doses to control the disease, is there any other way to understand that vaccines are not available everywhere?

Vaccine Maze. The key to understanding this whole problem A few days ago I gave Belén Tarrafetaa pharmaceutical company specializing in access to drugs, and the confusion of bureaucratic, commercial, and regulatory barriers (although in normal times necessary to guarantee pharmacological safety) that turns into a maze of no way out when a disease occurs. pulls us to the ropes.

As tarrafeta explains“Bavarian Nordic’s monkeypox vaccine was registered in 2019 under three different names: Jynneos in the US, Imvanex in the US, and Imvamune in Canada.” Here the unknowns begin: It is not clear why this inequality is caused.

While it is not clear what the reasons are (commercial, regulatory or otherwise), it seems necessary to “register a drug under one trade name such that the same drug is produced under another trade name”. in the same location, it is unregistered and therefore cannot be imported without ‘special permission'”.

rat race. And we are not talking about a future. When the epidemic started“Jynneos can hypothetically be used to prevent monkeypox in the United States, but Imvanex cannot be used in the European Union in this indication.” But the truth is that it was never used to stop an epidemic (despite the fact that epidemics of the disease occur repeatedly in Africa). It was a vaccine for strategic purposes, so to speak. It was there “just in case”.

So much so that the vaccine was stored in large containers (not in bottles) and there are “millions of doses past their expiration date a few months ago”. This was because when monkeypox broke out, the manufacturer put everything on hold with that vaccine to produce others with higher priority. Therefore, when the regulatory issue is fine-tuned (in June in the US and early July in Europe), there is a major bottleneck.

For this reason, although the packaging factories have doubled, the batches that come out are already owned vaccines. he does so He said New York “received over a hundred thousand doses, which is twice as many vaccines as the whole of the UK”. That is, countries around the world have returned to the “rat race” to get their vaccinations, and there is no general mechanism to rationalize the use of these vaccines.

More resources, worse results. As I said at the beginning, the lack of these mechanisms means that even though we have enough vaccines to contain the epidemic, we will not be able to contain it. Moreover, we will need millions of doses more than anticipated to see how the epidemic continues to spread before we can stop it. Stand in front of this nonsense and ask yourself, “Did we really learn nothing?” It is inevitable to ask.

Image | Steven Cornfield