THE World Health Organization on Wednesday, August 14, declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years.
The declaration followed an outbreak of the viral infection in Democratic Republic of Congo that has spread to neighbouring countries.
This was as Africa’s top public health body, the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned on Tuesday, August 8, of an alarming rate of spread of the viral infection, which is transmitted through close contact and causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions.
The WHO’s declaration came on the heel of the advice of an Emergency Committee of independent experts who met on Wednesday to review data presented by experts from WHO and affected countries.
The Committee, according to the WHO, informed the Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, that it considered the upsurge of mpox to be a public health emergency of international concerns (PHEIC), with potential to spread further across countries in Africa and possibly beyond the continent.
The PHEIC status is WHO’s highest level of alert and aims to accelerate research, funding and international public health measures and cooperation to contain a disease.
Speaking on the situation, Ghebreyesus said “The emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighbouring countries are very worrying. On top of outbreaks of other mpox clades in DRC and other countries in Africa, it’s clear that a coordinated international response is needed to stop these outbreaks and save lives.”
Mpox is a viral illness caused by the monkeypox virus, with two distinct clades: Clade I and Clade II. The disease can be transmitted through close contact, such as sex, skin-to-skin contact and talking or breathing close to another person.
Unlike the previous mpox public health emergency, declared in 2022, caused by the relatively mild Clade 2, the recent outbreak in Congo began with the spread of an endemic strain, known as clade I.
Since the start of 2024, there have been more than 15,600 cases of mpox in the DR Congo, with at least 537 deaths.
According to the WHO, mpox has been reported in the DRC for more than a decade, and the number of cases reported each year has increased steadily over that period.
“The emergence last year and rapid spread of a new virus strain in DRC, clade 1b, which appears to be spreading mainly through sexual networks, and its detection in countries neighbouring the DRC is especially concerning, and one of the main reasons for the declaration of the PHEIC.
“In the past month, over 100 laboratory-confirmed cases of clade 1b have been reported in four countries neighbouring the DRC that have not reported mpox before: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Experts believe the true number of cases to be higher as a large proportion of clinically compatible cases have not been tested,” WHO added.
The global health body stressed that it had released $1.5 million in contingency funds and planned to release more in the coming days.
Spread of Mpox to other neighboring countries
Meanwhile, the AfricaCDC, has warned that no fewer than 13 African countries, including previously unaffected nations like Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, have reported mpox outbreaks.
The body noted that these countries have confirmed 2,863 cases and 517 deaths, primarily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) alone in 2024.
“Suspected cases across the continent have surged past 17,000, a significant increase from 7,146 cases in 2022 and 14,957 cases in 2023. This is just the tip of the iceberg when we consider the many weaknesses in surveillance, laboratory testing and contact tracing,” the organisation added..
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: [email protected]. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M