WHO declares the outbreak of smallpox in the Congo a global emergency

Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an outbreak monkeypox or what is known as mpox in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa as a global emergency on Wednesday, August 14, 2024. There are confirmed cases among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new form of the virus is spreading .

There are only a few vaccine doses available on the continent.

Earlier this week, the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency, with more than 500 deaths, and called for international help to stop it. the spread of the virus.

“This is something we should all be concerned about. The potential for further spread in Africa and beyond is a cause for great concern,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as reported by AFPThursday, August 15 2024.

Africa’s CDC previously said mpox, also known as monkeypox, was found in 13 countries this year, with more than 96 percent of cases and deaths occurring in Congo.

Cases increased by 160 percent and deaths increased by 19 percent compared to the same period last year. So far, there have been more than 14,000 cases and 524 people have died.

“We are now in a situation where (pox) is a threat to more neighbors in and around Central Africa,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious disease expert who heads the CDC’s Africa crisis group. .

He said that the mortality rate in the new version of mpox from the Congo is likely to be around 3-4 percent.

In 2022, WHO declared mpox a global emergency after it spread to more than 70 countries where mpox had not been reported before, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men. In that outbreak, less than 1 percent of people died.

Michael Marks, professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the latest mpox outbreak in Africa was a necessary emergency if it was to generate more support to tackle it.

“It is the failure of the global community that has made things so bad to release needed resources,” he said.

Officials at the African CDC say that nearly 70 percent of cases in the Congo are in children under 15 years of age, who also account for 85 percent of deaths.

Jacques Alonda, an epidemiologist who works in the Congo with international charities, said that he and other experts are very concerned about the spread of mpox in refugee camps in the eastern part of the country which is torn by conflict.

“The worst case I have ever seen is the case of a six-week-old baby, who contracted mpox when he was only two weeks old,” said Alonda, adding that the child had to be cared for for a month.

“He was infected because the hospital was so crowded that he and his mother were able to share a room with another person who had the virus, who had not been diagnosed,” Alonda continued.

Save the Children said Congo’s health system had “collapsed” under the weight of malnutrition, measles and cholera.

The UN health organization said mpox was recently identified for the first time in four East African countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. All these events are connected to the revolution in the Congo. In Ivory Coast and South Africa, health authorities have reported an outbreak of a different, less dangerous version of mpox that spread around the world in 2022.

Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new, more deadly form of mpox, which can kill up to 10 percent of people, in a Congolese mining town they fear could easier distribution. ??Mpox is spread mainly through close contact with infected people, including through sex.

Unlike previous mpox outbreaks, where sores were mostly seen on the chest, hands and feet, this new form causes milder symptoms and sores on the genitals. That makes it harder to see, meaning people can spread the disease to others without knowing they have the disease.

Before the outbreak in 2022, the disease was mostly seen in sporadic outbreaks in Central and West Africa when people came into close contact with infected wild animals. Western countries during the 2022 outbreak largely stopped the spread of mpox with the help of vaccines and treatments, but very few of these vaccines and treatments are available in Africa.

Marks of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that without an mpox vaccine approved in the West, officials could consider vaccinating people against smallpox, a related disease.

“We need a large supply of vaccine so that we can vaccinate the most at-risk populations,” he said.

He said that this means sex workers, children and adults who live in outbreak areas.

Congo has not yet received a vaccine

Congolese authorities said they had requested 4 million doses. Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of the Congolese Monkey Pox Response Committee, said that the majority of the doses would be used for children under 18 years of age.

“The United States and Japan are two countries that are positioning themselves to provide vaccines to our country,” said Kacita Osako.

Dr. Dimie Ogoina, an mpox expert from Nigeria who is the chairman of the WHO emergency committee, said that there are still big gaps in understanding how mpox spreads in Africa. He called for a tougher investigation to monitor the outbreak.

“We act blindly when we cannot prove all suspected cases,” Ogoina said.

Although the WHO’s emergency declaration was intended to spur donor agencies and countries into action, the global response to previous declarations has been mixed.

Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease expert at Emory University, said the WHO’s latest emergency declaration for mpox “doesn’t do much” to get things like diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines to Africa.

“The world has a real opportunity here to act decisively and not repeat the mistakes of the past, (but) it will take more than just a (crisis) declaration,” Titanji decided.

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