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As cases of mpox skyrocket in Africa, health officials there have declared the continent’s first-ever public health emergency as a “call to action” for greater global support.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) made the statement during a press conference on Tuesday, a day ahead of a meeting of the World Health Organization emergency committee will meet to discuss the possibility of a new global public health emergency due to mpox, the disease formerly known as monkeypox.
The last WHO emergency declared lasted 10 months and followed the unprecedented global spread of mpox in the summer of 2022. While global numbers largely calmed after that outbreak, cases in Africa have been rising for months, including infections in several new countries.
“The world cannot afford to turn a blind eye to this crisis,” said Dr. Jean Kaseya, Director-General of the Africa CDC, during his speech on Tuesday.
Mpox is known to spread through sexual networks, but is also transmitted through other forms of close contact. It can cause a range of symptoms, from painful, pus-filled lesions to potentially fatal illness in vulnerable populations, including children and people co-infected with HIV.
While a milder clade of the virus caused the 2022 global outbreak, scientists and health officials began raising alarms in recent months about another clade spreading rapidly through the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which can cause more serious illness.
African health officials say a total of more than 15,000 cases of mpox and 461 deaths have been reported on the continent so far this year, a 160 percent increase compared to the same period in 2023. A total of 18 countries have been affected, with Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda recently reporting infections for the first time.
Given limited surveillance and the likelihood of mild infections, the number of cases and deaths is likely “just the tip of the iceberg,” epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim said at the Africa CDC briefing.
Africa aims for 10 million vaccine doses
At the global level, the latest WHO figures show that there have been nearly 100,000 laboratory-confirmed mpox infections in 116 countries since early 2022, with cases recently increasing again in some regions outside Africa, including Canada.
In Toronto, for example, public health officials said Tuesday that the city was experiencing another spike in cases, with nearly 100 reported by the end of July, compared with 21 infections during the same period last year. One of those people was hospitalized but has since recovered, officials told CBC News. Ottawa previously announced that cases were also rising in that city.
Yet the epicenter remains in Africa, with families across the continent being torn apart by the disease, Kaseya told reporters. The emergency is not a formality, he added, but a “call to action.”
The Africa CDC has signed an agreement to purchase and rapidly distribute 200,000 vaccine doses produced by Bavarian Nordic, but Kaseya stressed that this number is not enough to suppress the number of cases. Officials are working to secure more than 10 million doses in total, he said.
Toronto Public Health is advising people to get vaccinated against mpox amid a surge in confirmed cases of the virus in the city this year. As CBC’s Anam Khan reports, there have been 21 cases of mpox reported in Toronto this year.
Earlier this monthThe US has pledged an additional $10 million in health care funding in response to the MPOX outbreak in the DRC and surrounding region, on top of a months-old pledge to donate 50,000 vaccine doses.
As for Canada, federal officials here have not yet responded to CBC News’ questions about what assistance, if any, the country can provide. but told earlier According to the Globe and Mail, there are no plans to share doses from Canada’s stockpile.
Multiple scientists told CBC News that the world is simply not responding quickly enough to this ongoing crisis. Some questioned whether the emergency declarations from the Africa CDC or the WHO will be enough to trigger a global response.
“Globally we have slowed down the situation over time [DRC] “with obviously predictable outcomes,” said MPOX researcher and microbiologist Jason Kindrachuk of the University of Winnipeg during a recent phone call from Kinshasa, DRC.
Kindrachuk is one of the scientists whose ongoing research highlights the distribution of a new clade in the Central African country.
“The concern is increasing day by day,” he said.
‘Matter of time’ before virus flares up again worldwide
The big question now is what impact the Africa CDC statement will have on the WHO talks, which start on Wednesday.
The organization’s mpox emergency committee will give its views on whether the situation in Africa constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) in a closed, virtual meeting. “WHO will provide updates as they become available,” the organization said Tuesday.
Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease specialist and assistant professor at the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, said the WHO’s latest statement did not provide enough support for vaccines, therapies and resources to strengthen testing and surveillance efforts across the African continent.
“What would be different this time, if we hadn’t actually declared the previous state of emergency?” she asked.
A Toronto resident shares his recovery from monkeypox disease. Government officials and advocates say more support is needed for patients during the long weeks of isolation.
According to Titanji, it is now likely that the DRC variant of this virus could spread globally, similar to the sudden spread of mpox just two years ago.
“Given that the world is so interconnected,” she added, “it is only a matter of time before we have the first case in countries outside the African region.”
During his speech, Kaseya stressed that African countries will continue to combat the spread of the virus regardless of the level of international assistance.
“We’ve faced Ebola, we’ve faced the devastation of HIV, we’ve faced the threat of COVID,” he said. “In each of these battles, we’ve emerged stronger… mpox will be no different.”
