The World Health Organization maintained its maximum alert level for the MPOX epidemic on Thursday, February 27, February 27, the number of affected cases and countries that continue to increase.
The WHO head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has stored in the opinion of a specialist committee that believes that the maximum alert level is justified in terms of “continuous increase in cases and geographical extension, violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which makes the answer difficult, as well as the lack of funds to implement” the response, specifies the press release.
Dr. Tedros had declared the urgency of public health of the international scope on August 14, 2024, in the face of the meteoric propagation of the disease previously known as the monkey variola in Africa, and in particular in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The USPPI is the highest alert level according to international health regulations, which is legally binding for 196 countries.
A disease that can be fatal
Mpox is caused by a virus of the same family as smallpox, which can be transmitted to humans by infected animals, but can also be transmitted from one human to another by close physical contact.
The disease, which was first detected in humans in 1970 in the RDC, then known as Zaire, causes fever, muscle pain and large cutaneous lesions similar to boils, and can be fatal.
She has two subtypes: clade 1 and clade 2. The virus, endemic from central Africa, reached the headlines in May 2022 when clado 2 spread throughout the world, mainly affecting men with sex with men. Since then, almost 128,000 MPOX cases have been confirmed in the laboratory in 130 countries, including 281 deaths, according to the most recent data in WHO.
The very touched dr Congo
Faced with the first outbreak, which had already declared a USPPI in July 2022, but thanks to vaccination and conscience campaigns that helped stop the propagation, the organization had raised the alert in May 2023.
However, only one year later, a new epidemic exploded mainly in Dr. Congo, with the original strain of clado 1 and the new clado, 1b. This led the WHO to launch the maximum alert again last August. To date, the propagation of the CADA 1B strain has been confirmed in the RDC and in five other African countries where it affects thousands of people.
The RDC confirmed more than 13,000 cases of MPOX and 43 deaths last year, and the country confirmed more than 2,000 cases in the first five weeks of this year, more than half of the cases affirmed worldwide. Cases have also been detected in fifteen countries around the world, linked to trips made in the most affected areas of Africa.
Source: BFM TV
