The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday (14/8) declared the current surge in mpox cases in Africa to be a global health emergency, sounding its highest warning alarm over the worsening situation.
“Today, the emergency committee met and advised me of their view that this situation constitutes a public health emergency of international concern. I accepted that advice,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference.
“This is a situation that must concern us all. WHO is committed in the days and weeks ahead to coordinating a global response, working closely with every country affected, and scaling up our engagement on the ground, to prevent the spread, care for those infected, and save lives,” he added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday convened an expert meeting to decide whether the surge in mpox cases in Africa should be declared a global public health emergency.
The meeting of 16 international experts comes after the African Union's health watchdog declared its own public health emergency following the outbreak.
Mpox has spread throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the virus, previously known as monkeypox, was first discovered in humans in 1970, and has spread to other countries.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that more than 14,000 cases and 524 deaths have been reported so far this year in Congo, surpassing the total number of cases last year.
“The emergence last year and rapid spread of clade 1b in Congo, which appears to be spread primarily through sexual contact, and its detection in neighbouring countries of Congo, is of great concern, and was one of the main reasons for my decision to convene this emergency committee meeting,” Tedros said at the opening of the meeting.
“In the past month, about 90 cases of clade 1b have been reported in four neighboring countries of Congo that have not previously reported mpox cases, namely Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda,” he added.
“But we are not facing just one outbreak with one clade, we are facing a number of outbreaks from different clades in different countries, with different modes of transmission and at different levels of risk,” Tedros added.
In May 2022, mpox infections surged worldwide, mostly infecting gay and bisexual men, due to a subclade of clade 2b.
The WHO declared a public health emergency, which lasted from July 2022 to May 2023. The outbreak, which has now largely subsided, caused about 140 deaths from about 90,000 cases.
A subclade of clade 1b, which has been surging in Congo since September 2023, causes more severe disease than clade 2b, with a higher mortality rate.
Pox is an infectious disease caused by a virus that is transmitted to humans by infected animals, but can also be transmitted from human to human through close physical contact.
This disease causes fever, muscle pain, and large, boil-like skin lesions.
Two mpox vaccines have been recommended by WHO immunization experts.
Public health emergencies have only been declared seven times since 2009, over H1N1 swine flu, poliovirus, Ebola, Zika virus, a second Ebola virus, Covid-19 and mpox. (ns/jm)
