The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that the ongoing mpox outbreak in Africa is a “public health emergency of international concern.”
Mpox, originating in Africa, had first caused a global outbreak in 2022.
A public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) is the highest alarm the WHO can sound.
A PHEIC declaration triggers emergency responses in countries worldwide under the legally binding International Health Regulations.
Mpox is an infectious disease caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
Last year, reported cases increased significantly, and already the number of cases reported so far this year has exceeded last year’s total, with more than 15,600 cases and 537 deaths.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “The emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighboring countries are very worrying.”
And while the disease has mainly spread in Congo, several cases of mpox have been reported in four neighboring countries.
Tedros said the more than 14,000 cases and 524 deaths reported so far this year in DR Congo has already exceeded last year’s total.
“It’s clear that a coordinated international response is essential to stop these outbreaks and save lives,” Tedros said.
The WHO alarm came one day after the African Union’s health watchdog declared its own public health emergency over the growing outbreak.
Also, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies voiced “profound concern” over the spread of the virus.
With its broad network, the IFRC said it was prepared to “play a crucial role in containing the spread of the disease, even in the hard-to-reach areas where the need is the greatest.”
Mpox has swept through the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the virus formerly called monkeypox was first discovered in humans in 1970, and spread to other countries.
The new mpox variant, known as Clade Ib, appears to spread more easily through routine close contact, particularly among children.
Jean Claude Udahemuka, from the University of Rwanda, told Sky News last month that Clade 1b is “undoubtedly the most dangerous so far of all the known strains of mpox.”
Tedros said that in the past month, “about 90 cases of clade 1b have been reported in four countries neighboring the DRC that have not reported mpox before: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.”
It is the second PHEIC in succession on mpox – albeit one focused on a different, and more deadly, strain of the virus. In May 2022, mpox infections surged worldwide due to the clade 2b subclade.
The clade 1b subclade, which has been surging in the DRC since September 2023, causes more severe disease than clade 2b, with a higher fatality rate.
A PHEIC has only been declared seven times previously since 2009: over H1N1 swine flu, poliovirus, Ebola, Zika virus, Ebola again, Covid-19 and mpox.
Marion Koopmans, director of the Pandemic and Disaster Management Centre at Erasmus University Rotterdam, said a PHEIC declaration raises the alert globally.
But “the same priorities remain: investing in diagnostic capacity, public health response, treatment support and vaccination,” she said, warning that this would be a challenge as the DRC and its neighbors are lacking resources.
Officials at Africa CDC say the continent needs more than 10 million vaccine doses but only about 200,000 are available.
The new strand has the same symptoms as others but they are more severe, according to Leandre Murhula Masirika, a research coordinator in South Kivu province.
An analysis of patients hospitalized from October to January in eastern Congo suggested the new form of mpox initially caused milder symptoms and lesions mostly on the genitals, making it harder to spot.
Currently there is no treatment approved specifically for mpox infections, according to the CDC.
It says that for most patients with mpox who have intact immune systems and don't have a skin disease, supportive care and pain control will help them recover without medical treatment.
However, a two-dose vaccine has been developed to protect against the virus, which is widely available in Western countries but not in Africa.
