WHO declares international health emergency due to mpox

Madrid. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a public health emergency of international concern, its highest alert level, due to the outbreak of mpox — formerly known as monkeypox — in Africa, which originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and is caused by a new, more serious and lethal strain.

The WHO decided this after analysing the situation on Wednesday with 16 experts from the Emergency Committee. “Today, the emergency committee confirmed and advised me that, in its opinion, the situation constitutes a public emergency of international concern. I have accepted that advice,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the press conference following the meeting.

“The detection and rapid expansion of a new Mpox climate in western DRC, its detection in neighbouring countries that have not previously reported Mpox, and the potential for a broader expansion in Africa and beyond, is of great concern,” he added.

The number of cases so far this year has surpassed last year’s total, with more than 14,000 diagnoses and 524 deaths, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus Adhanom said during the meeting. The meeting, which was scheduled for 12 noon, has lasted more than five hours.

On Tuesday, the African Centre for Disease Control had already declared a continental health emergency due to the disease.

The emergence of the new variant in the DRC in 2023 and its rapid spread, mainly through sexual transmission, and its detection in neighbouring countries of the DRC, is “particularly worrying” for WHO. In the last month, some 90 cases of the new strain have been reported in four neighbouring countries of the DRC that had not previously reported mpox: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

In 2022, the emergency has already been declared

In 2022, the United Nations health agency had already declared a global health emergency due to an outbreak of mpox, a disease endemic to Africa that had spread to dozens of countries.

As for Europe, less than a month ago, at the end of July, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) considered the risk of this new strain reaching Europe as “very low”.

“The risk to the EU and EEA population from the new mpox variant identified in the DRC remains very low. ECDC is working with our partners in Africa in their efforts to contain this outbreak for the benefit of all those affected, to prevent the further spread of this new variant and to strengthen future preparedness and response capacities,” said ECDC Director Pamela Rendi-Wagner.