Mpox declared global health emergency by WHO as new form of the virus spreads
The World Health Organization has declared mpox a global health emergency after recent outbreaks in in Congo and elsewhere in Africa.
Cases have been confirmed among children and adults in more than a dozen countries in Africa and a new form of the virus is spreading. Few vaccine doses are available on the continent.
"This is something that should concern us all ... The potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying," said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In May, the New York City Department of Health cautioned that cases of mpox have surged in the city since October, peaking at 51 cases in July.
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Health officials say that the outbreak in Africa is of the most severe Clade I mpox, while the United States is seeing only Clade II cases.
"We are now in a situation where (mpox) poses a risk to many more neighbors 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.
In 2022, two people in New York City died from mpox, which the WHO renamed from ‘monkeypox’ due to concerns over "racist and stigmatizing language."
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The 2022 outbreak was stymied in Western nations thanks to vaccinations and treatments, but few of those tools are available to fight the current outbreak in Africa.
What is mpox?
Mpox, is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that's in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals, but it was not known to spread easily among people.
Mpox cases began emerging in Europe and the U.S. in May 2022, mostly among men who have sex with men. Cases escalated rapidly in dozens of countries in June and July, around the time of gay pride events. The infections were rarely fatal, but many people suffered painful skin lesions for weeks.
In late July 2022, the World Health Organization declared an international health crisis. In early August, the U.S. declared a public health emergency.
With the Associated Press.