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The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued an urgent warning about a new strain of monkeypox, which causes the disease known as Mpox, which has proven much more lethal and It is spreading rapidly across several African countries.
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This worrying situation has forced the Director General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to consider the call of an Emergency Committee to assess whether this outbreak should be declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
Monkeypox and Mpox
Mpox is a viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus. which causes painful skin lesions and can be fatal, especially in individuals with weakened immune systems. The virus is transmitted from person to person through close contact, including sexual contact. It also has animal reservoirs in eastern, central and western Africa, where animal-to-human transmission can occasionally occur, triggering new outbreaks.
Regarding the situation of the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), transmission traditionally occurred mainly from animals to humans, mainly from rodents, affecting mainly children in rural areas.
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However, the recent outbreak in the African country has shown a worrying change in transmission patternsalso affecting adults through sexual contact.
And recent study published in the magazine Science has confirmed that new cases reported recently in Uganda and Kenya They belong to a more deadly variant of the virus, previously identified only in the DRC. Mobility in the east of the country and connections with neighbouring countries made it inevitable that cases would also appear in these countries.
WHO has stepped up its efforts, together with the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and other international partners, to stop the transmission of the virusHowever, Tedros has pointed to the urgent need for more funding for a comprehensive response that includes diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.
Questions and answers about monkeypox
What is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern?
An Emergency Committee, under the International Health Regulations (IHR), is a group of experts convened by WHO to advise the Director-General on whether an event constitutes a public health emergency of international concern. Once declared, this alert level allows for greater global coordination and mobilization of resources to contain the threat..
In the case of monkeypox, the clade 1 strain, the most virulent, has caused a 3% mortality rate in the last year in the DRCIn comparison, the milder clade 2 strain, which spread from Nigeria in 2022, has had a mortality rate of 0.2%. The spread of the more dangerous strain to neighbouring countries such as Rwanda and Burundi, which had so far reported no cases of monkeypox, has raised serious concerns.
El Africa CDC has approved an emergency fund of 10.4 million dollars to strengthen surveillance and improve access to vaccines in affected countriesFurthermore, the recent approval of two monkeypox vaccines in the DRC and investment in clinical trials to test their effectiveness post-infection demonstrate the global effort to control the outbreak.
In July 2022, the WHO had already declared another global outbreak of monkeypox as a public health emergency of international concern. This is the highest global alert level, a category that had previously been applied to Covid-19 and polio, among others.
Future of containment
WHO has stressed that containing the virus requires intensified public health measures, including surveillance, community engagement, treatment and targeted distribution of vaccines to the highest-risk groups.
He Strategic framework launched by WHO will guide health authorities and communities in preventing and controlling future outbreaks, minimizing zoonotic transmission of the virus.
