WHO declares mpox outbreaks in Africa a global health emergency

The World Health Organisation has declared the mpox outbreaks 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,” said WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

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The Africa CDC previously said that mpox, also known as monkeypox, has been detected in 13 countries this year, and that more than 96% of all cases and deaths are in Congo.

“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 said the new version of mpox spreading from Congo appears to have a death rate of about 3-4%.

In 2022, WHO declared mpox to be a global emergency after it spread to more than 70 countries that had not previously reported mpox, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men.

In that outbreak, fewer than 1% of people died.

Michael Marks, a professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said declaring these latest 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.

Officials at the Africa CDC said nearly 70% of cases in Congo are in children younger than 15, who also accounted for 85% of deaths.

Jacques Alonda, an epidemiologist working in Congo with international charities, said he and other experts were particularly worried about the spread of mpox in camps for refugees in the country’s conflict-ridden east.

“The worst case I’ve seen is that of a six-week-old baby who was just two weeks old when he contracted mpox,” Mr Alonda said, adding the baby has been in their care for a month.

“He got infected because hospital overcrowding meant he and his mother were forced to share a room with someone else who had the virus, which was undiagnosed.”

Save the Children said Congo’s health system already had been “collapsing” under the strain of malnutrition, measles and cholera.

The UN health agency said mpox was recently identified for the first time in four East African countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

All of those outbreaks are linked to the one in Congo.

In Ivory Coast and South Africa, health authorities have reported outbreaks of a different and less dangerous version of mpox that spread worldwide in 2022.

Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadlier form of mpox, which can kill up to 10% of people, in a Congolese mining town that they feared might spread more easily.

Mpox mostly spreads via close contact with infected people, including through sex.

Unlike in previous mpox outbreaks, where lesions were mostly seen on the chest, hands and feet, the new form causes milder symptoms and lesions on the genitals. That makes it harder to spot, meaning people might also get ill without knowing they are infected.

Before the 2022 outbreak, the disease had mostly been seen in sporadic outbreaks in central and West Africa when people came into close contact with infected wild animals.

Western countries during the 2022 outbreak mostly shut down the spread of mpox with the help of vaccines and treatments, but very few of those have been available in Africa.