LONDON — The World Health Organization has declared mpox outbreaks in Congo and elsewhere in Africa a global emergency, with cases confirmed among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new form of the virus spreading. Few vaccine doses are available on the continent.
Earlier this week, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the mpox outbreaks were a public health emergency, with more than 500 deaths, and called for international help to halt the spread of the virus.
“This is something that should concern us all… The potential for further spread beyond Africa and beyond is very worrying,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The Africa CDC previously said that mpox, also known as monkeypox, has been detected in 13 countries this year and that more than 96% of all cases and deaths occur in Congo. Cases increased by 160% and deaths increased by 19% 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 (mpox) poses a risk to many more neighbors in and around Central Africa,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious disease expert who chairs the Africa CDC emergency group. He noted that the new version of mpox spreading across Congo appears to have a mortality rate of about 3-4%.
During the 2022 global mpox outbreak, which affected more than 70 countries, less than 1% of people died.
Michael Marks, professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said declaring mpox outbreaks in Africa an emergency is justified if it can lead to more support to contain them.
“It is a failure of the global community that things have gotten so bad to free up the necessary resources,” he said.
Africa CDC officials said nearly 70% of cases in Congo are in children under the age of 15, who also accounted for 85% of deaths.
Jacques Alonda, an epidemiologist working in Congo with international charities, said he and other experts were particularly concerned about the spread of mpox in refugee camps in the conflict-ridden east of the country.
“The worst case I have ever seen was a six-week-old baby who was just two weeks old when she contracted mpox,” said Alonda, adding that the baby has been in her care for a month. “He became infected because overcrowding at the hospital meant he and his mother were forced to share a room with another person who had the virus, who was not diagnosed.”
Save the Children said Congo’s health system was already “collapsing” under pressure from malnutrition, measles and cholera.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said authorities are facing multiple mpox outbreaks in several countries with “different modes of transmission and different levels of risk”.
The UN health agency said mpox was recently identified for the first time in four East African countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. All of these outbreaks are linked to the one in Congo. In Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa, health authorities reported outbreaks of a different, less dangerous version of mpox that spread around the world in 2021.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadliest form of mpox, which can kill up to 10% of people, in a Congolese mining town that they feared could spread more easily. Mpox spreads mainly through close contact with infected people, including through sex.
Unlike previous mpox outbreaks, where lesions were mainly seen on the chest, hands and feet, the new form causes milder symptoms and lesions on the genitals. This makes detection more difficult, meaning people can also make others sick without knowing they are infected.
In 2022, the WHO declared mpox a global emergency after it spread to more than 70 countries that had not previously reported mpox, primarily affecting gay and bisexual men. Prior to this outbreak, the disease had mainly been seen in sporadic outbreaks in Central and West Africa when people came into close contact with infected wild animals.
Most Western countries have prevented the spread of mpox with the help of vaccines and treatments, but very few of these are available in Africa.
Marks, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that in the absence of licensed mpox vaccines in the West, authorities could consider inoculating people against smallpox, a related disease. “We need a large supply of vaccines so that we can vaccinate the highest risk populations,” he said, adding that this would mean sex workers, children and adults living in regions with outbreaks.
Congolese authorities said they ordered 4 million doses of the mpox vaccine, Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of the Congo Monkeypox Response Committee, told the Associated Press. Osako said they would mainly be used for children under 18.
“The United States and Japan are the two countries that have positioned themselves to give vaccines to our country,” Osako said.
While the WHO’s emergency declaration was intended to spur donor agencies and countries to act, the global response to previous emergency designations has been mixed.
Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease expert at Emory University, said the WHO’s latest emergency declaration for mpox “did very little to move the needle” toward getting things like diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines to Africa.
“The world has a real opportunity here to act decisively and not repeat past mistakes, (but) this will require more than an (emergency) declaration,” Titanji said.
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Associated Press writers Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, Christina Malkia in Kinshasa, Congo and Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
