Responding to the Global Mpox Threat

Khadijah Ibrahim Nuhu, senior social and behavior change advisor for JSI on the MOMENTUM Routine Immunization and Equity project, joins USAID and other partners in welcoming the delivery of 10,000 vaccines at the Abuja, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Nigeria. Photo: MOMENTUM Routine Immunization and Equity project.

The growing mpox outbreak underscores the critical need for a comprehensive, integrated approach to preventing and responding to emerging infectious diseases. Globally, we must enhance surveillance methods; strengthen vaccine supply, distribution, and equipment maintenance; advance community and medical countermeasures; and end stigma, discrimination, and misinformation to ensure equitable health care access. Collaboration with animal and environmental health experts is also essential to prevent zoonotic transmission.

JSI is mobilizing vital support to multilateral, national, and community partners while ensuring staff safety. With our extensive expertise in disease surveillance, supply chain and health logistics, immunization, community health, and social and behavior change, we are ready to help countries and communities prevent, detect, and respond to this health threat.

In early September 2024, Dr. Olawale Durosinmi-Etti, JSI Nigeria country director, participated in the handover ceremony of 10,000 vaccine doses to bolster Nigeria’s mpox response. Through the USAID-supported global MOMENTUM Routine Immunization Transformation and Equity project, JSI is working with Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency to develop implementation plans for mpox vaccine introduction; enhance supply chain management, including the transportation and storage of vaccines to service delivery points; and strengthen the capacity of frontline workers to ensure safe and effective vaccine administration.

Beyond this immediate response, our projects and country offices are engaged in other efforts, including equipping providers with health commodities needed to prepare and respond to new outbreaks, heightening surveillance systems, and working with communities to share knowledge on protective measures and signs of mpox.

Through USAID’s global flagship Country Health Information Systems and Data Use (CHISU) program, JSI health information system experts held a training for lab officers at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Ghana to use their existing Surveillance Outbreak Response and Analysis System (SORMAS) tool to detect mpox, informing their evidence-based response strategies. Through the Zambia DISCOVER-Health Project, our staff are working with the Ministry of Health as it increases surveillance efforts, and the team is preparing provider and client materials, particularly for mobile populations. Through the Project’s work on the Health Hub: Men on the Move, a virtual platform targeted at providing health services to male mobile populations, the facility teams are briefing staff and clients on the signs and symptoms of mpox, and required action if necessary. Our affiliate the Partnership for Supply Chain Management developed and published an mpox diagnostics overview, and, at the request of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, completed a landscape assessment.

We will continue to monitor the evolving mpox threat and its effects on our projects, staff, and the communities we serve. While there is still much to learn about the new strains that are circulating, we can draw on our extensive experience in responding to emerging infectious diseases. We know how to build agile health systems, mobilize alongside community organizations, and unite with national and international partners in times of need to ensure better health outcomes for all.