The World Health Organisation on Wednesday declared mpox a global health emergency in response to the growing number of cases both in Africa and other continents. Mpox belongs to the same family of viruses as smallpox but causes milder symptoms like fever, chills and body aches. People with more serious cases can develop characteristic lesions on the face, hands, chest and genitals.
Formerly known as monkeypox, the virus that was first identified by scientists in 1958 when there were outbreaks of a “pox-like” disease in monkeys. The name was changed to mpox because it is inaccurate, with scientists suggesting that the virus may have actually originated from rodents. This week WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the emergence and spread of a new variant of mpox as “very worrying”.
“It’s clear that a coordinated international response is essential to stop these outbreaks and save lives,” he said, as he raised concerns about the virus’s spread across international borders. The first case to reported outside of Africa was discovered in Sweden, with officials in Thailand also seeking on Wednesday to determine the strain of an mpox case in a European man who arrived from Africa the previous week. More than 17,000 mpox cases and 524 deaths have been reported in Africa this year alone, with more than 96 per cent of fatalities reported from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is the second time in two years that the WHO has expressed deep conce.