Monkeypox declared an emergency in Africa

Just 15 months after the end of the emergency in which he was the protagonist, the monkeypox – now renamed mpox – is once again causing fear. The emergence of a new strain that is more dangerous than the one that spread between 2022 and 2023 and the explosion of cases in Africa has raised the alarm level again. In the afternoon, African countries have already provided an initial response: they have declared mpox a public health emergency for the security Mainland.

Tomorrow, August 14, the World Health Organization's emergency committee will assess whether the virus represents a global threat again. "This declaration is not simply a formality, it is a clear call to action. We must be proactive and aggressive in our efforts to contain and eliminate this threat," said the director general of the African CDC Jean Kaseya. The concern is linked to the emergence of a new strain of the virus (called Clade 1b): it is more virulent than the one that spread between 2022 and 2023 throughout the world (Clade 2b) but, compared to the sister virus endemic in Africa central – Clade 1a -, is transmitted more easily, for example through close contact, such as sexual contact. It is this variant of the virus that has caused infections to rise in recent months, starting from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which today is the epicenter of the epidemic.

The exact numbers are not certain. Today, the new WHO bulletin estimated 567 infections in the African continent for the month of June. However, it is certainly an underestimate. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention speaks of about 15 thousand cases on the continent since the beginning of the year and 461 deaths. It is not only the size of the infections that is worrying. The virus is showing that it is capable of crossing borders and establishing itself in areas where it was not present until now. In the latest WHO survey, for example, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda also reported their first infections.

The profile of infected people is also completely different from that observed between 2022 and 2023. In that case, adult males were the most affected; today, minors are among the main victims. According to data released by the WHO, 39% of cases and 62% of deaths reported from the beginning of the year until May in the Democratic Republic of the Congo involved children under 5 years of age. 20% of the deceased had not yet turned one year old and, according to Save the Children, even newborns as young as two weeks are being admitted to hospitals due to the disease.

“The worst case I have seen was a child who was only two weeks old when he contracted mpox,” says Jacques, an epidemiologist and mpox expert at a Save the Children partner. “He had rashes all over his body, high fever and his skin was starting to turn black.” The child is now being treated, but there are fears for thousands of other children potentially exposed to the virus. Around Goma there are three camps for displaced people where about 354 children are crammed into tents in unsanitary conditions,” says Greg Ramm, Save the Children’s country director in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The situation risks exploding. This “is not just another challenge but a real crisis that requires collective political action,” said Jean Kaseya. “But let me be clear: this is not just an African problem, mpox is a global threat,” he concluded.