London, Europe Brief News – The European Commission will purchase 110,000 doses of monkeypox vaccines to distribute among member states.
The commission has signed a contract for nearly 110,000 doses of vaccines to combat the ongoing monkeypox outbreak.
The third-generation vaccines are manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, a biotechnology company based in Denmark.
The announcement was made on Tuesday morning by Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for health and food safety, ahead of a meeting with health ministers from the member states.
The first deliveries of doses will begin at the end of June, Kyriakides said, to those countries “most in need.”
Norway and Iceland, who are not in the EU, will also participate in the the joint scheme.
Unlike the COVID-19 vaccines, which were procured by the Commission but paid individually by EU countries, the monkeypox contract will be initially funded under the common EU budget.
“This is the first time that we’re using EU funds in order to purchase vaccines that we can then distribute to member states,” the Commissioner said.
“This shows what we can [do] when we work together and the power of having the structures in place so that we can immediately respond to a crisis such as we have now.”
The ongoing monkeypox outbreak was detected in early May across several European countries to then reach an international dimension.
