WHO calls emergency meeting over surge in Mpox outbreak in some African countries

The World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee on monkeypox (formerly known as monkeypox) will meet “as soon as possible” to assess whether to declare the highest level of alert in the face of the epidemic currently underway in several African countries, the head of the organization announced on Wednesday, August 7. “Given the spread of MPOX outside the Democratic Republic of Congo and the possibility of further international spread within and outside Africa, I have decided to convene an emergency committee”said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

This qualification is the highest alert that the WHO can trigger and it is the head of the WHO who can launch it on the advice of the committee. MPOX was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), with the spread of the Clade I subtype (of which the new variant is a mutation), mainly limited since then to countries in western and central Africa, with patients generally being contaminated by infected animals.

In 2022, a global epidemic, carried by the Clade II subtype, spread to about a hundred countries where the disease was not endemic, mainly affecting homosexual and bisexual men. The WHO then declared maximum alert in July 2022 in the face of this outbreak of cases worldwide, then lifted it less than a year later, in May 2023. The epidemic caused some 140 deaths out of approximately 90,000 cases.

But the new strain of mpox, detected in the DRC in September 2023 and named “Clade Ib”, then reported in several neighboring countries, raises fears of a spread of this virus. “Clade Ib” causes rashes all over the body, when previous strains were characterized by localized rashes and lesions, on the mouth, face or genitals.