WHO declares spread a global health emergency

For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency. This time the cause is monkeypox, which has spread in just a few weeks to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’S director- general, on Saturday overruled a panel of advisers, who could not come to a consensus, and declared a “public health emergency of international concern,” a designation the WHO currently uses to describe only two other diseases, COVID- 19 and polio.

“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria” for a public health emergency, Tedros told reporters.

The WHO’S declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response. The designation can lead member countries to invest significant resources in controlling an outbreak, draw more funding to the response and encourage nations to share vaccines, treatments and other key resources for containing the outbreak.

It is the seventh public health emergency since 2007; the COVID- 19 pandemic, of course, was the most recent.

At a meeting in June, the WHO’S advisers concluded that although monkeypox was a growing threat, it was not yet an international emergency. The panel could not reach a decision Thursday, Tedros said.

Many experts roundly criticized the process as shortsighted and overly cautious.

Monkeypox has been a concern for years in some African countries, but in recent weeks, the virus has spread worldwide. Some 75 countries have reported at least 16,000 cases so far, about five times the number when the WHO’S advisers met in June.

Nearly all the infections outside Africa have occurred among men who have sex with men. The outbreak has galvanized many in the LGBT community, who have charged that monkeypox has not received the attention it deserves, as happened in the early days of the HIV epidemic.

As of Saturday, the United States had recorded nearly 3,000 cases, including two children, but the real toll is thought to be much higher, as testing is only now being scaled up. Britain and Spain each have about as many cases, and the rest are distributed through about 70 countries.

Many of the infected in these countries report no known source of infection, indicating undetected community spread.