Friday, August 30
Mpox vaccine free of charge in Berlin from September
Starting in September, patients in Berlin will only need to present their healthcare card in order to get vaccinated against Mpox at their GP’s office. Until now, the vaccine was only available at the pharmacy, and needed to be ordered in advance at the cost of several hundred euros.
In the past two weeks, there was a heightened sense of alarm – particularly among the Berlin’s at-risk gay community – after the first case of the more dangerous “clade 1” variant was reported in Sweden. This was the first time the deadlier strain was seen outside of central Africa, where it has been spreading since September of last year. On Wednesday, the WHO declared the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a health emergency of international concern.
Until now, the only place where Berliners could get vaccinated free of charge was the Centre for Sexual health in Mitte – but this has been oversubscribed and quickly ran out of capacity in the last weeks.
The Mpox virus was first detected in laboratory monkey in Denmark in 1958, and was known until recently as monkeypox. In November 2022, the WHO officially renamed the virus Mpox, since the former name was both medically incorrect (monkeys are not the main host or reservoir of the disease) and was seen to reinforce racist stigma about African countries as the source of the virus.
The Robert Koch Institute currently recommends vaccination against Mpox for gay men with changing sexual partners, as well as for staff who work with viruses in specialised laboratories. Two doses are usually required.
