LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization has declared Mpox outbreaks in Congo and other parts of Africa a global emergency. Cases have been confirmed in children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new form of the virus is 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, with over 500 deaths, constituted a public health emergency and called for international assistance to stop the spread of the virus.
“This is something that should worry us all… The possibility of further spread across Africa and beyond is very worrying,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The Africa CDC had previously stated that Mpox, also known as monkeypox, has been detected in 13 countries this year and that over 96% of all cases and deaths have occurred in Congo. Compared to the same period last year, cases have increased by 160% and deaths by 19%. So far, there have been over 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 heads the Africa CDC’s emergency response group. He noted that the new version of MPOX spreading from Congo appears to have a fatality 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 an emergency over MPOX outbreaks in Africa was justified if it could lead to more support in containing the disease.
“The fact that it had to come to this point to release the necessary resources is a failure of the international community,” he said.
Africa CDC officials said nearly 70 percent of cases in Congo involve children under 15, who also account for 85 percent of deaths.
Jacques Alonda, an epidemiologist who works for international aid groups in Congo, said he and other experts are particularly concerned about the spread of Mpox in refugee camps in the conflict-ridden east of the country.
“The worst case I have seen was that of a six-week-old baby who was only two weeks old when he contracted Mpox,” Alonda said, adding that the baby had been in her care for a month. “He contracted it because he and his mother were forced to share a room with another person who had the virus but was undiagnosed due to hospital overcrowding.”
According to Save the Children, the health system in Congo is already “collapsing” due to malnutrition, measles and cholera.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said authorities were facing multiple MPOX outbreaks in different countries with “different transmission routes and different risk levels.”
The UN health agency said Mpox was recently first detected in four East African countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. All of these outbreaks are linked to the one in Congo. In Ivory Coast and South Africa, health authorities reported outbreaks of a different and less dangerous variant of Mpox that spread around the world in 2022.
Earlier this year, scientists reported Emergence of a new form the more deadly form of Mpox, which can kill up to 10% of people, in a Congolese mining town where they feared it might spread more easily. Mpox spreads mainly through close contact with infected people, including through sex.
Unlike previous Mpox outbreaks, in which lesions appeared mainly on the chest, hands and feet, the new form causes milder symptoms and lesions on the genitals. This makes it harder to detect, meaning people can also infect others without knowing they are infected.
In 2022, the WHO declared Mpox a global emergency after the disease spread to more than 70 countries where Mpox had not previously been reported, primarily affecting gay and bisexual men. Before this outbreak, the disease had mainly occurred in sporadic outbreaks in Central and West Africa when people came into close contact with infected wild animals.
With the help of vaccines and treatments, Western countries were able to largely contain the spread of Mpox, but very few of these were available in Africa.
Marks, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that given that there are no licensed smallpox vaccines available in the West, authorities may consider vaccinating against the related disease smallpox. “We need a large supply of vaccine so that we can vaccinate the most vulnerable populations,” he said, adding that this meant sex workers, children and adults in outbreak areas.
Congolese authorities have requested four million doses of the monkeypox vaccine, Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of the Congolese Committee for the Fight against Monkeypox, told the Associated Press. Osako said these would be used mainly for children under 18.
“The United States and Japan are the two countries that have agreed to supply vaccines to our country,” Osako said.
Although the WHO’s emergency declaration is intended to encourage donor agencies and countries to act, the global response to previous emergency declarations has been mixed.
Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease expert at Emory University, said the WHO’s latest emergency declaration on Mpox had “little impact” on supplying Africa with diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines.
“The world has a real opportunity here to act decisively and not repeat the mistakes of the past. But this will require more than a declaration of emergency,” 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.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Science and Educational Media Group of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. All content is the responsibility of the AP.
