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Mpox cases are surging at an “unprecedented” scale in multiple African countries this year, according to the World Health Organization.
Painful rashes that spread around the body and fever are the most visible signs of an mpox infection. It is typically contracted through physical contact with other humans or animals. The disease was formerly called monkeypox, as it is thought to have been first spotted in laboratory monkeys, according to the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Aug. 8, 2030 confirmed cases and 15 deaths have been recorded in 15 African countries, compared to 1145 cases and seven deaths last year, the WHO said. Separately, the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) estimates a 160% increase in cases and 19% rise in deaths over the past year.
On Wednesday, the WHO director general Tedros Ghebreyesus said he will ask a committee of experts to advise on whether to declare the current outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.”
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The Democratic Republic of Congo, where a human mpox case was first identified in 1970, accounts for nine in ten of current cases in Africa.
Clade 1b, a new variant of a virus prevalent in the country for years, has been identified as the cause of the current outbreak. It is responsible for cases reported in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, while its link to cases in Burundi is still under investigation. Mpox cases caused by other Clade variants have been reported in the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Nigeria and South Africa.
Ending the outbreak will require a push to “interrupt the transmission of the virus,” the WHO’s Africa director Matshidiso Moeti said. But the agency is cautioning against imposing travel restrictions on affected countries.
Two vaccines are recommended by the WHO for mpox. An “emergency use” declaration that will increase their access to low and middle income countries has been made, Ghebreyesus said.
The African Union allocated $10.4 million on Monday towards mpox response to the African CDC, from a COVID-19 response fund. After being briefed on Thursday by the Africa CDC director general Jean Kaseya, the current chairperson of the African Union — Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, President of Mauritania — said he would convene a meeting of African heads of state “to address the epidemic and reinforce Africa’s health systems.”
The View From A VIROLOGIST
Mpox resurgence may be due to reduced attention to vaccination against smallpox, said Cheryl Walter, a virologist at the University of Hull in the UK. Smallpox vaccines can be used for mpox but the effective eradication of smallpox over time led to declining need for its vaccine. “With more and more of the population unvaccinated against the related smallpox, mpox can now jump from person to person unhindered,” Walter argued.
Step Back
The WHO last issued a public health emergency alert on mpox in 2022. It was prompted by a first-time simultaneous occurrence of cases in endemic countries (around West and Central Africa) and non-endemic countries (Europe and North America). At the time, most reported cases were identified at facilities providing sexual health services and “involved mainly, but not exclusively, men who have sex with men,” the WHO said.