The Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed the continent has received its first donation of monkeypox vaccine from South Korea.

The first batch of 50,000 doses would be given to health workers and people living in the hardest-hit areas like Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria.

There have been 202 deaths recorded from monkeypox in the continent with a death rate of 19.3 percent across 13 countries.

Acting CDC Director Ahmed Ogwell noted that there were 51 new Mpox cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past week, with Ghana and Nigeria being the other most affected countries in Africa.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently announced that it would start using “mpox” as the preferred term for monkeypox, to avoid racism and stigmatisation stemming from the existing name.

In the last months, the UN has also criticised news coverage about the disease, warning that poor reporting can “reinforce homophobic and racist stereotypes and exacerbate stigma”.

In June, WHO had said it was in the process of procuring thousands of mpox tests for Africa but was not recommending mass vaccination at this stage, according to Africa CDC Director Matshidiso Moeti.