At the end of last week and after several delays, a first shipment of monkeypox, or mpox, vaccine donations finally arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While the Big Pharma corporations and the Western governments who’ve been sitting on stockpiles of these vaccines for two years might try to claim a PR success, the truth is that the whole crisis exposes the deeply neocolonial nature of the global health system.

Despite the lessons that we should have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic about the lethal inequities that shape the production and supply of medical treatments, those who benefit from the status quo are still resisting the necessary transformation. As long as the current system remains in place, it will pose a serious danger to public health throughout the world.