Following the confirmation of cases among children and adults in over a dozen countries and the transmission of a novel strain of the virus, the World Health Organization on Wednesday deemed the mpox outbreaks in the Congo and other parts of Africa to be a global emergency.
There aren’t many vaccine doses available in the continent. With over 500 deaths from mpox outbreaks, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this week that the virus was a public health emergency and requested assistance from other countries to halt its spread. “We should all be concerned about this… Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, stated, “The potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying.”
As previously reported by the Africa CDC, 13 nations have reported cases of mpox, commonly known as monkeypox, this year, with the Congo accounting for almost 96% of cases and fatalities. Compared to the same time last year, there have been 160% more cases and 19% more deaths. More than 14,000 cases and 524 fatalities have been reported thus far.
“We are in a situation where many more neighbors in and around central Africa are at risk from (mpox),” stated Salim Abdool Karim, the chair of the Africa CDC emergency committee and an expert in infectious diseases from South Africa. According to him, the new strain of mpox that is emerging from the Congo seems to have a 3-4% fatality rate.