Monkeypox declared global emergency as it spreads to 70 countries
THE expanding monkeypox outbreak now qualifies as a global emergency, the World Health Organisation has said.
With the virus now present in more than 70 countries, the WHO has classed its transmission an ‘extraordinary event’ that requires a co-ordinated global response.
According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 74 countries since the spring.
To date, monkeypox deaths have been reported only in Africa, where the virus spreads to people from infected wild animals.
In Europe and North America, however, monkeypox is spreading among people with no links to animals or recent travel to Africa. Most people recover without needing medical attention, although the lesions monkeypox causes may be painful.
Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University, said it was surprising the WHO had not already declared monkeypox a global emergency, with the conditions arguably having been met weeks ago.
‘I think it would be better to be proactive and over-react to the problem instead of waiting to react when it’s too late,’ he said.
He added that the WHO’s emergency declaration could help donors like the World Bank make funds available to stop the outbreaks both in the West and in Africa.
Although monkeypox has been established in parts of central and west Africa for decades, it was not known to spark large outbreaks beyond the continent or to spread widely among people until May, when authorities detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
The WHO’s Dr Rosamund Lewis said this week that 99 per cent of all the monkeypox cases beyond Africa were in men and that, of those, 98 per cent involved men who have sex with men. In the US, some experts have speculated whether monkeypox might be on the verge of becoming an entrenched sexually transmitted disease in the country, like gonorrhoea, herpes and HIV.
‘The bottom line is we’ve seen a shift in the epidemiology of monkeypox where there’s now widespread, unexpected transmission,’ said Dr Albert Ko, professor of public health and epidemiology at Yale University. ‘There are some genetic mutations in the virus that suggest why that may be happening, but we do need a globally-coordinated response to get it under control.’
Dr Ko called for testing to be scaled up rapidly, saying that, similar to the early days of Covid-19, there were significant gaps in surveillance.
‘The cases we are seeing are just the tip of the iceberg,’ he said.
‘The window has probably closed for us to quickly stop the outbreaks in Europe and the US, but it’s not too late to stop monkeypox from causing huge damage to poorer countries without the resources to handle it.’ In the US, officials estimate that 1.5million men are at high risk of being infected.
The WHO has previously declared emergencies for public health crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, the Zika virus in Latin America in 2016, and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio. The emergency declaration mostly serves as a plea to draw more global resources and attention to an outbreak. Last month, the WHO said the outbreak did not yet amount to an international emergency, but this week it re-evaluated the situation.
However, some have concerns over how efforts to combat monkeypox will be distributed.
Dr Placide Mbala, a virologist who directs the global health department
‘Since the spring there have been 16,000 cases’
at Congo’s Institute of National Biomedical Research, said he hoped they would be equitable. Although countries including Britain, Canada, Germany and the US have ordered millions of vaccine doses, none have gone to Africa. ‘The solution needs to be global,’ Dr Mbala said, adding that any vaccines sent to Africa would be used to target those at highest risk, such as hunters in rural areas.
‘Vaccination in the West might help stop the outbreak there, but there will still be cases in Africa, Unless the problem is solved here, the risk to the rest of the world will remain.’