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The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) expects to receive its first delivery of mpox vaccine doses on Thursday and a second delivery on Saturday, the head of the central African country’s mpox outbreak response said on Wednesday.

DRC is the epicenter of an mpox outbreak that the World Health Organization declared to be a global public health emergency last month, but efforts to curb the spread of the disease have been hampered by a lack of vaccines.

Response chief Cris Kacita did not give Reuters further details on the number of doses or the provider.

The vaccine doses’ arrival would help to address a huge inequity that left African countries with no access to the two shots used in a 2022 global mpox outbreak, while they were widely available in Europe and the United States.

Kacita said on Monday that DRC hoped to start the first wave of vaccination on October 8, but that this would depend on it receiving vaccines this week.

Health authorities face a steep challenge launching the vital campaign across a tropical country the size of western Europe. The doses must be kept at -90 degrees Celsius (-130°F) and communities can be wary of participating.

“The vaccine will not be distributed as soon as it is received,” Kacita said, explaining why it would take around a month from delivery to launch the campaign.

“We need to communicate so that the population accepts the vaccination,” he said, adding that the six targeted provinces have the capacity to store the doses at the required temperature.

Mpox typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions and can kill. There were 19,710 suspected cases of mpox reported since the start of the year in DRC by August 31, according to the health ministry. Of those, 5,041 were confirmed and 655 were fatal.

“The greatest loss of human life is in rural areas. These are remote areas where there is no support,” said a doctor working in Congo’s response who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

The doctor expressed concern that a successful campaign would depend on vaccinating those in the vicinity of confirmed positive cases, but many areas with suspected cases lacked the right resources.

“We can’t have laboratories in places with no water or electricity. This is the weakness of current surveillance, the lack of capacity to check suspected cases in the laboratory,” the doctor said.