MPOX has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO). The latest outbreak has seen cases confirmed in 15 countries - but experts fear this is only the beginning . Due to travel, they expect it to cross other borders rapidly .
Since the beginning of the year, mpox has already killed at least 511 people and infected 16,789 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention data shows. But the highly-contagious condition quickly spread to Burundi and the Central African Republic, where there have been 226 and 258 cases respectively. Mpox is also on the rise in Cameroon (35 cases, two deaths), Nigeria (24 cases), South Africa (24 cases, three deaths), Congo (169 cases, one death), Liberia (five cases), Ghana (four cases) Cote d'Ivoire (two cases), Rwanda (two cases), Uganda (two cases) and Kenya (one case).
READ MORE ON MPOX Last night, officials in Sweden recorded the first mpox case outside of Africa , followed by Pakistan , which is monitoring three cases. No other countries have confirmed cases or deaths, but experts fear it is "almost certainly" already in the UK . Professor Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, told Times Radio: "We saw with the 2022 pandemic of mpox that once it gets into sexual networks, it can spread very rapidly around the world and it’s actually very difficult to control that spread.
"I think it’s not surprising that .