According to Nam News Network, the World Health Organisation declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) in August 2024 after a two-pronged mpox epidemic broke out, primarily in the DRC. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus lifted the status following Thursday's quarterly meeting of the UN health agency's emergency committee on the mpox outbreak. However, he cautioned that the possibility of continued flare-ups and new outbreaks remains.
The African Union's public health watchdog stated on Thursday that the current downward trends are not yet stable enough to justify lifting the emergency at the continental level. This year, until the end of July, more than 34,000 confirmed cases worldwide have been reported to the WHO, including 138 deaths from 84 countries, with more than 15,000 of the cases in the DRC.
Mpox, caused by a virus from the same family as smallpox, can be transmitted to humans by infected animals and also between people through close physical contact. The disease, which was first detected in humans in 1970 in the DRC, then known as Zaire, causes symptoms such as fever, muscular aches, and large boil-like skin lesions, and can be deadly.
Dimie Ogoina, who chaired the WHO's mpox emergency committee, noted that the case fatality rate had dropped in endemic regions from 3.6 percent to around one percent. He urged countries not to grow complacent about mpox and to maintain vigilance, warning that failure to invest in combating mpox could put the world at risk of a resurgence.
The WHO reported that more than three million vaccine doses had been delivered to 12 countries, with just under one million doses administered. Mpox has two subtypes: the more severe clade 1 and clade 2. The virus, long endemic in central Africa, gained international prominence in May 2022 when clade 2 spread globally, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men.
The WHO initially declared a global health emergency in July 2022, but the declaration was lifted in May 2023 due to successful vaccination and awareness drives. A year later, however, a new epidemic broke out, with both the original clade 1a strain and a new strain, clade 1b, leading the WHO to declare a new PHEIC.