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The World Health Organization has declared a second international public health emergency in just two years due to an outbreak of mpox, in a sign of growing alarm over the spread of the infectious disease in Africa.
The Geneva-based U.N. body made the announcement Wednesday evening, a day aVsceker the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made a similar move, and urged the world to help address a surge in cases in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
MPox has become a growing focus of concern as an example of the growing global threat of zoonotic diseases, which are transmitted from animals to humans. The WHO has called on MPox vaccine manufacturers to apply for emergency use approvals to speed up delivery.
The latest surge in cases was “very worrying,” warned Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO.
“It is clear that a coordinated international response is essential to stop these epidemics and save lives,” he said.
WHO is helping countries trace contacts, test blood samples and distribute vaccines, he added.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, can cause fever, skin lesions, and sometimes death. It can be more serious among patients with uncontrolled HIV and is spread through contact with infected people or animals, or contaminated materials.
At least 13 countries have reported outbreaks, and there have been 2,863 cases and 517 deaths this year, the Africa CDC said Tuesday.
The most severe clade 1b variant was identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo last September and has now been traced to neighboring Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and the Central African Republic.
The WHO sounded the alarm in a report this week, saying that limited access to testing in rural areas had led to an underestimation of the number of confirmed cases.
“This is not just another challenge; it is a crisis that requires our collective action,” said Africa CDC Director General Dr. Jean Kaseya. “The fight against mpox requires a global response. We need your support, your expertise and your solidarity. The world cannot afford to turn a blind eye to this crisis.”
DRC is the epicenter of the disease, with an estimated 15,000 cases identified this year, more than the total for 2023. The country has never had supplies of mpox vaccines.
Save the Children has raised the alarm over “overcrowded hospitals” in the DRC, highlighting an “already fragile health system that is still recovering from past Ebola and Covid-19 outbreaks and shortages of staff and medical supplies”.
Experts have said the current outbreak could be more severe than the previous WHO health emergency, which occurred between July 2022 and May 2023.
“It is clear that we are facing a different scenario, with many more cases, which translates into a higher disease burden,” said Professor Salim Abdool Karim, director of Caprisa, an AIDS research programme in South Africa.
The 2022-23 outbreak included cases among people who had traveled to North America and Western Europe, but not to countries in West and Central Africa where the disease is endemic. It was the first time so many cases and clusters had been reported simultaneously across such a wide range of regions, the WHO said.
Bavarian Nordic, the Danish maker of one of two vaccines recommended by WHO experts, said Tuesday it has received an order for more than 175,000 doses through the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). The company has also donated another 40,000 doses to HERA.
But the Africa CDC said 2 million doses and 10 million doses in total would be needed this year to effectively control the outbreak.
