PARIS, Aug 21 — France will donate 100,000 mpox vaccine doses to countries suffering from the emergency, as it readies vaccination centres at home, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said Tuesday.

Attal said France would donate the vaccines through the European Union.

The World Health Organisation has declared the surge of mpox cases in Africa to be an international health emergency and the United States has said it will donate 50,000 mpox vaccine doses to Democratic Republic of Congo.

The UN health agency has called for a major increase in vaccine production and said that a vaccination campaign must be a key priority for affected countries.

Last week, the health agency of the African Union said some 200,000 vaccines would be deployed across Africa, thanks to agreements with the EU and Danish drug company Bavarian Nordic, whose vaccine was approved in 2019.

Some 232 vaccination sites are in place in case of an eventual outbreak in France, Attal posted on the X social media platform.

"We aim to be ready to face all scenarios and all risks,” he said.

No mpox cases have yet been reported in France. Sweden’s Public Health Agency announced last week it had registered a case of the more dangerous Clade 1b variant of mpox.

While that was the first case in Europe, the patient had been infected during a visit to an affected African country.

The virus has swept across the DRC, killing more than 570 people so far this year, the government said Monday.

Outbreaks have been reported in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July. — AFP