Why is the Mpox epidemic, which originated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, spreading to neighbouring countries?

Cases of Mpox have been reported in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, which border the Democratic Republic of Congo. The World Health Organization has raised its highest alert level.

It was in the Democratic Republic of Congo that a new strain of the virus, the CLADE 1 B strain, was discovered in September 2023. Many cases of Mpox, formerly called monkeypox, were then observed in a mining town in the east of the country, located not far from the border with Rwanda and Burundi.

A border area where the infrastructure is sometimes basic and where there is a lot of traffic. The border is crossed every day by mine workers, businessmen but also many sex workers from neighboring countries. They even represent a third of those infected by the virus.

Between January and July 2024, 14,000 cases of Mpox were recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as many as for the whole of 2023. Mpox is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans but is also transmitted through close physical contact.

Thus, cases are gradually being reported in Rwanda and Burundi, but also in Uganda and Kenya, transported from the DRC by infected individuals. “To the extent that we see that this strain has left its ecological niche which was rather the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is clear that we can have an international transmission and that is why the WHO declared this emergency situation so that all countries are well alerted”explains on franceinfo Dr Sylvie Briand, director of the epidemic and pandemic risk department at the WHO.

An outbreak also favored by the lack of health resources in the DRC. Even if the country had already approved several vaccines, stocks are insufficient to deal with this new variant which affects all age groups, which is more transmissible and which kills more. The mortality rate is estimated at 3.6%.

Although currently in a state of concern, Mpox was first discovered in humans in 1970, already in what is now the DRC (formerly Zaire), with the spread of CLADE 1, mainly limited since then to countries in western and central Africa, with patients generally being contaminated by infected animals.