WHO again considers declaring monkeypox a global emergency
The World Health Organisation’s emergency committee has convened to consider for the second time within weeks whether to declare monkeypox a global crisis.
The meeting came as some scientists said the striking differences between the outbreaks in Africa and in developed countries will complicate any coordinated response.
African officials said they were already treating the continent’s epidemic as an emergency. But experts elsewhere said the mild version of monkeypox in Europe, North America and beyond makes an emergency declaration unnecessary even if the virus can’t be stopped.
“I remain concerned about the number of cases, in an increasing number of countries, that have been reported,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the emergency committee as its meeting got underway.
He said it was “pleasing” to note falling numbers of monkeypox cases in some countries but that the virus is still increasing elsewhere and that six countries reported their first infections last week.
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There are now more than 15,000 monkeypox cases worldwide. While the United States, Britain, Canada and other countries have bought millions of vaccines, none have gone to Africa, where a more severe version of monkeypox has already killed more than 70 people. Rich countries haven’t yet reported any monkeypox deaths.
“What’s happening in Africa is almost entirely separate from the outbreak in Europe and North America,” said Dr Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia who previously advised WHO on infectious diseases.
The UN health agency said this week that outside of Africa, 99 per cent of all reported monkeypox cases are in men and of those, 98 per cent are in men who have sex with other men. Still, the disease can infect anyone in close, physical contact with a monkeypox patient, regardless of their sexual orientation.
African experts acknowledge they could be missing cases among gay and bisexual men, given limited surveillance and stigmatisation against LGBTQI+ people, authorities have relied on standard measures like isolation and education to control the disease.
Dr Placide Mbala, a virologist who directs the global health department at Congo’s Institute of National Biomedical Research, said there are also noticeable differences between patients in Africa and the West.
Dr Dimie Ogoina, a professor of medicine at Nigeria’s Niger Delta University, said he feared the world’s limited vaccine supplies would result in a repeat of the problems that arose in the coronavirus pandemic, when poorer countries were left empty-handed after rich countries hoarded most of the doses.
