Taxpayer-funded vaccines meant to aid Africa are at risk of expiring

Hundreds of thousands of doses of mpox vaccine that the United States had promised to send to African nations are in danger of going to waste, dozens of congressional Democrats said in a letter to the U.S. State Department on Wednesday.

Forty-eight Democratic members of the House of Representatives, led by Representatives Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Sara Jacobs of California, signed the letter, saying that the vaccines may expire as they sit in warehouses, wasting the U.S. taxpayer dollars that paid for them.

The letter said 800,000 doses of the vaccines are at risk, and that some 220,000 doses could be viable if the State Department begins shipping them immediately.

“This is a moral, strategic, and public health failure in the making,” the letter said.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has made sharp cuts to foreign aid programs since beginning his second term six months ago, firing thousands of aid agency employees and contractors and throwing global humanitarian operations into chaos.

The Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives passed legislation this month approving Trump’s request for about $8 billion in foreign aid cuts.

Trump has said the U.S. pays disproportionately for foreign aid, and he wants other countries to shoulder more of the burden.

The World Health Organization first declared the outbreak of mpox in August 2024, when an outbreak of a new form of the disease spread from the badly-hit Democratic Republic of Congo to neighboring countries.

Uganda and Burundi also have been significantly affected.

Mpox is a viral infection that spreads through close contact and typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. It is usually mild, but can be lethal.

The WHO said last month that the outbreak was still a public health emergency of international concern, its highest form of alert.

—Patricia Zengerle, Reuters