The potential for the disease’s further spread beyond Africa is ‘very worrying,’ WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says.
The World Health Organization has declared the mpox outbreaks in Congo and elsewhere in Africa a global emergency, with cases confirmed among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new form of the virus spreading. Few vaccine doses are available on the continent.
Earlier this week, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the mpox outbreaks were a public health emergency, with more than 500 deaths, and called for international help to stop the virus’ spread.
“This is something that should concern us all … The potential for further spread beyond Africa and beyond is very worrying,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The Africa CDC previously said that mpox, also known as monkeypox, has been detected in 13 countries this year, and that more than 96 per cent of all cases and deaths are in Congo.
Cases are up 160 per cent and deaths are up 19 per cent compared with the same period last year. So far, there have been more than 14,000 cases and 524 people have died.
“We are now in a situation where [mpox] poses a risk to many more neighbours in and around central Africa,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious diseases expert who chairs the Africa CDC emergency group. He noted that the new version of mpox spreading from Congo appears to have a death rate of about 3-4 per cent.
During the global 2022 mpox outbreak that affected more than 70 countries, fewer than 1 per cent of people died.
Michael Marks, a professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said declaring the mpox outbreaks in Africa an emergency is warranted if that might lead to more support to contain them.
“It’s a failure of the global community that things had to get this bad to release the resources needed,” he said.
