After the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COPD a public health emergency of international concern, experts say it is critical that Canada responds.
“When there is a fire, we all put it out quickly and the whole village is safe. If you let a house burn in a village, sooner or later, that fire will come looking for you,” illustrated D.r Madhukar Pai, Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health at McGill University.
The WHO statement comes as MPOX, also known as monkeypox, has spread in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and appeared in neighbouring Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, where no cases of the virus had previously been reported.
Other African countries have experienced outbreaks of different clades (or types) of mpox. An emergency committee of independent experts told the WHO director-general it was concerned about the “potential for spread to other countries in Africa and possibly outside the continent,” according to a press release.
While the current risk in Canada is low, the declaration of an international emergency is a signal for all countries to report their own cases of mpox and share resources to help the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC) control outbreaks, said Dr.r Pai in interview.
“What we should do is instantly unite with other countries in the Global North — the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe — [et] “Propose a package of money, resources, vaccines, medicines, tests, everything that is necessary for CCPM Africa to get ahead of this pandemic before it becomes a real global threat,” Dr.r Pai.
Doing so is not only being a “good global citizen,” but also the best way to prevent mpox from travelling and becoming a bigger threat in Canada, he argued.
“We cannot afford another global epidemic. And now is the time to act, not when it is too late and suddenly it happens in Montreal. […] Then we will scramble to try to get ahead of it. We will spend millions more fighting it here rather than helping Africa now,” said Dr.r Pai.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada Research Chair in Emerging and Re-emerging Viruses at the University of Manitoba, agrees.
“Viruses and emerging infectious diseases do not respect international borders and do not issue passports,” he illustrated in an interview.
“As we let these things spread more widely across communities and countries […]the risk of spread in our own country increases,” he adds.
Mr. Kindrachuk also highlighted the financial consequences for Canada, as well as other countries, if they do not react quickly.
“Whenever these outbreaks escalate to the point of triggering a public health emergency, whether locally or globally, there has to be a huge effort in terms of economy and resources to try to contain the situation at that point,” he said.
One of the main reasons for declaring an international emergency, the WHO said, is the emergence of a new strain of mpox, called clade 1b, which is spreading rapidly and appears to cause more severe disease.
There have been no cases of clade 1 in Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) confirmed in an emailed statement Wednesday.
“PHAC is closely monitoring the increase in MPOX clade 1 cases in the DRC and neighbouring regions and is liaising with partners and subject matter experts to update risk assessments, public health guidance and travel health advice as appropriate,” said the agency, which is also monitoring an increase in MPOX clade 2 cases in Ontario.
MPOX clade 2 is the milder form of the virus that emerged in Canada during an outbreak in 2022.
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