The Mpox epidemic, also called “monkey pox”, is spreading across the African continent. So much so that this Sunday, August 4, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that he was considering convening a committee of experts to determine whether this new epidemic resurgence should be classified as an international emergency. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus indicated that the UN agency and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were increasing their efforts to interrupt the transmission of the virus.
“But there is a need for more funding and support for a global response,” he said on the social network X. “I am considering convening an emergency committee on international health regulations to advise me on whether the mpox outbreak should be declared a public health emergency of international concern,” he continued. This designation is the highest alert that the WHO can issue and it is the head of the WHO who can issue it on the advice of the committee.
More deadly strain
On July 11, WHO warned of the global health threat posed by MPOX, expressing concern about an outbreak of a new, more deadly strain of the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda have announced multiple cases of MPOX. The DRC has reported more than 11,000 cases, including 450 deaths.
The virus was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the spread of the Clade 1 subtype since then mainly limited to countries in western and central Africa, with patients usually being infected by infected animals, for example by eating bushmeat. But by May 2022, infections with the virus, then considered “extraordinary”, had occurred in more than 75 countries, mainly affecting gay and bisexual men.
Several Western countries, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Spain and Sweden, had reported cases of monkeypox. The disease can be transmitted through close contact with an infected person or contact with objects they have used, such as clothing, bedding or utensils. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, swollen lymph nodes, chills and fatigue. Rashes can occur, going through different phases before forming a crust and falling off. This global epidemic of “monkeypox” had already led the WHO, two years ago, to declare a public health emergency of international concern in July 2022. The WHO ended this state of alert in May 2023.
In response to the spread of Mpox, preventive vaccination was offered to groups most at risk of the virus in 2022. Smallpox vaccines, used in the smallpox eradication program in the 1970s, provide protection against Mpox. In addition, other, more recent vaccines have also been developed, including one approved for the prevention of monkeypox.