MPOX no longer represents a global public health emergency, said on Friday, following a constant drop in cases and deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other affected countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared an emergency in public health of international concern (Pheic) in August 2024 after an MPOX epidemic with two -stories broke out, mainly in the DRC.
The WHO The chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus raised the status following the quarterly meeting on Thursday from the Emergency Committee of the United Nations Health Agency on the MPOX epidemic.
“This decision is based on a sustained drop in cases and deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in other affected countries, including Burundi, Sierra Leone and Uganda,” he said at a press conference.
Tedros said there was now a better understanding of what stimulated transmission, while the most affected countries had improved their ability to react.
“The lifting of the emergency declaration does not mean that the threat is over, or that our response will stop,” said Tedros, noting that the situation remained a continental emergency in Africa.
“The possibility of continuing thrusts and new epidemics,” he said.
The public health guard of the African Union said Thursday that “current downward trends are not yet stable enough” to justify the emergency of the continental level.
This year, until the end of July, more than 34,000 affirmed cases in the world were reported to the WHO, including 138 deaths, from 84 countries. More than 15,000 of the cases were in the DRC.
Vigilance
MPOX is caused by a virus from the same family as the smallpox. It can be transmitted to humans by infected animals, but can also be transmitted between people by close physical contact.
The disease, which was first detected in humans in 1970 in the DRC, then known as Zaire, causes fever, muscle pain and large skin lesions in the shape of a boiling and can be deadly.
DIMIE OGOINA, which chaired the MPOX OMS Emergency Committee, said the mortality rate of cases had dropped in endemic regions of 3.6% to around 1%.
But he urged countries not to become complacent about MPOX and to “throw what we have won” during the emergency.
The fact of not investing in the fight against mpox “will put the world as the risk of resurgence,” he said, calling for sustained vigilance.
The WHO said that more than three million doses of vaccines were delivered to 12 countries, with just under a million doses administered.
MPOX has two subtypes: the more serious clade 1 and the clade 2.
The virus, endemic for a long time in Central Africa, acquired international importance in May 2022 when the Clade 2 spread around the world, mainly affecting gay and bisexual men.
The WHO declared a global emergency in terms of health in July 2022, but thanks to vaccination and awareness readers who helped stem the propagation, this declaration was lifted in May 2023.
A year later, however, a new epidemic broke out, both the original strain of the Clade 1A and a new strain, the Clade 1B, causing WHO to declare a new pheic.
A pheic has been declared only eight times since 2009: on the swine flu H1N1, the poliovirus, the zika virus, the COVVI-19 and twice on Ebola and MPOX.
