The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared mpox a global emergency amid surging infection rates among children and adults in more than a dozen countries, CBS News reports.
A global emergency is the WHO’s highest level of alert, and it comes after the Africa Centers for Disease Control declared earlier this week that mpox outbreaks are a public health emergency. With more than 500 deaths already reported, the Africa CDC has called for international assistance to stop the virus from spreading further.
Ninety-six percent of mpox cases and deaths are concentrated in the Congo; however mpox has been detected in 13 countries this year, according to the Africa CDC. Children are disproportionately affected, with 70 percent of cases in the Congo occurring in those younger than 15, children also account for 85 percent of deaths.
Compared with the same period last year, cases are up 160 percent and deaths are up 19 percent. So far, there have been more than 14,000 cases, and 524 people have died. This would put the death rate at about 3-4 percent, according to Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious diseases expert and chair of the Africa CDC emergency group.
“It’s clear that we’re facing a different scenario with far more cases, resulting in a higher burden of illness,” he said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus echoed this sentiment, stating, “This is something that should concern us all … The potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying.”
Mpox is part of the same family of viruses as smallpox and causes a painful skin rash or lesions which can last from two to four. It’s accompanied by a high fever, muscle aches, back pain, headache, low energy and swollen lymph nodes, according to the WHO. It was first identified in monkeys back in 1958, which is how the name monkeypox originated (the virus has since been renamed due its discriminatory implications, as Essence reported). The first human case of monkeypox was recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970.
In 2022, the WHO also declared mpox a global emergency when the virus appeared in more than 70 countries. During that outbreak, gay and bisexual men were primarily affected and less than one percent of infected people died.
However, a new form of mpox is circulating that’s more deadly than the 2022 variant. Earlier this year scientists identified it in a Congolese mining town; it can kill up to 10 percent of infected people. The new variant spreads like the previous one—through close physical contact such as sex—and isn’t airborne. However, symptoms are milder, and whereas previous mpox outbreaks saw lesions concentrated on the hands, feet and torso, this variant causes lesions on the genitals making it harder to spot; potentially allowing people to spread it without realizing they’re infected, CBS reports.
Controlling the spread of the disease is complicated by the scarcity of mpox vaccines available on the continent. However, in an interview with the Associated Press, Michael Marks, a professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that officials could consider immunizing people against smallpox, a related disease.
“We need a large supply of vaccine so that we can vaccinate populations most at risk,” he said, adding that would mean children, adults and sex workers living in outbreak regions.
Congolese authorities have requested four million doses of the vaccine to inoculate young children but none have been received yet, said Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of Congo’s Monkeypox Response Committee.
While the WHO’s emergency declaration is meant to fast-track resources to stop the outbreak, the global community’s lack of urgency comes as no surprise to Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University. Titanji told the AP that the last WHO emergency declaration for mpox “did very little to move the needle” on getting medicines, diagnostic tests, and vaccines to Africa.