Morocco produces Africa’s first mpox tests

Richard Songa was one of many patients who had mpox during a recent outbreak in the town of Kamituga in eastern Congo (DRC) in September.

He believes he would have died if he did not receive treatment from the clinic here.

Doctors at the Kamituga health clinic say they were overwhelmed, sometimes operating at full capacity.

Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported more than 59,000 mpox cases and 1,164 deaths in 20 countries so far this year. The majority have been in the east African nations of Burundi, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.

After African countries struggled to get enough COVID-19 tests, officials vowed to make the continent less dependent on imports for medical supplies.

So, in a first for Africa, a Moroccan company is now filling orders for mpox tests on the continent.

Moldiag, a Moroccan startup, began developing mpox tests after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus a global emergency in August.

After facing criticism for moving too slowly on providing vaccines, the WHO in September approved an initial vaccine and announced a plan to provide vaccines, tests and treatments to the most vulnerable people in the world’s poorest countries.

But near the epicenter in eastern Congo’s South Kivu province, doctors still rely on experience and observations to diagnose patients in the absence of laboratory tests, taking people’s temperatures and looking for visible symptoms.

The WHO recommends all suspected cases be tested. But most aren’t confirmed by laboratory tests due to a shortage and the fact that most of Congo’s 26 provinces don’t have laboratories capable of processing them.

That makes it difficult to ascertain how the virus is spreading, a key mechanism to containing it, health officials say.

At his factory in Morocco, Abdeladim Moumem, Moldiag’s founder and Chief Scientific Officer, says the Moroccan-manufactured tests could help remedy shortages in an affordable way.

“For mpox, they (WHO) recommend something like $5 and not more, and we are less than $5 a test. So this is something that we have in our DNA. The main thing of our presence in Africa is to provide things for Africa in a very competitive and very efficient, cost-efficient way,” says Moumem.

Moldiag won approval to distribute its mpox tests from Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in November.

It hasn’t submitted paperwork to be considered for expedited approval from the World Health Organization.

During this outbreak, the WHO has approved three mpox tests from American and Swiss companies and is considering five others, including from Spanish and Chinese manufacturers.

Morocco has reported three mpox cases and most of the tests manufactured here are likely destined for export.

Moldiag last month began accepting orders from east African nations near the epicenter of the outbreaks.

“At the moment, we start to have some orders from some African countries, such as the DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Burundi and Uganda. And this is just a start, because we just started to have orders. We are expecting some other orders from Nigeria, for instance, Senegal, and other countries, because we are collaborating also with the pastoral institutions in Senegal, and in other countries like Ivory Coast as well. So this is just a start with something like 50,000 tests for all these countries, and I think that the demand will be increased in the future,” says Moumem.

Moumem says producing mpox tests in Africa helps facilitate a faster response to the pandemic.

Moldiag was founded out of the Morocco’s Foundation for Advanced Science, Innovation and Research (MASCIR), a non-profit affiliated with a private university whose research has received some funding from the European Commission and Morocco’s Ministry of Higher Education.

The biotech startup has for years produced similar genetic tests for viruses such as COVID-19 and Tuberculosis says Moumem: “The first one that has been manufactured in Moldiag and commercialized by Moldiag as well was the COVID-19 test, and we’ve been able to produce something like 5 million tests which have been sold around Morocco, all Morocco, because we were the main provider for the Ministry of Health here in Morocco, as well as to many African countries such as Senegal, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, and so on.”

Mpox is spread primarily through close skin-to-skin contact with infected people or their soiled clothes or bedsheets.

It often causes visible skin lesions that could make people less likely to be in close contact with others.

Each time someone is tested, a health worker swabs the rash and sends the genetic sample to a lab for processing.

Experts don’t advise swabbing asymptomatic people like they did COVID-19.

But they say mpox testing is critical because many symptoms resemble diseases such as chicken pox or measles.

Testing allows health authorities to trace contacts and identify people who may have unknowingly been exposed.

Africa CDC has procured tests that its emergency commission has evaluated for reliability outside of the WHO process from the United States, China, European Union and Singapore.

Only tests that require laboratory processing have been approved by Africa CDC or the WHO.