FILE PHOTO: Test tubes labeled ‘Monkeypox virus positive and negative’ are seen in this illustration on May 23, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File PhotoDADO RUVIC/Reuters
The spread of the monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries is an “extraordinary” situation that qualifies as a global emergency, the head of the World Health Organization said on Saturday, a statement that could spur more investment in the treatment of the disease that was once rare and worsen the struggle for scarcity. vaccines
A global emergency is the WHO’s highest alert level, but the designation does not necessarily mean that a disease is particularly communicable or lethal. Similar statements were made in 2016 for the Zika virus in Latin America and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision to call monkeypox a global emergency despite a lack of consensus among experts on the United Nations health agency’s emergency committee, saying it acted as “a tie breaker”. It was the first time that a head of the United Nations health agency had made such a decision unilaterally without the recommendation of an expert.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little,” Tedros said. “I know this has not been an easy or straightforward process and that there are differing opinions.”
WHO emergencies chief Dr Michael Ryan said the director-general declared monkeypox a global emergency to ensure the world took the current outbreaks seriously.
Although monkeypox has been established in parts of central and western Africa for decades, it was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond the continent or spread widely among people until May, when authorities they detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
Last month, the WHO expert committee said the smallpox outbreak was not yet an international emergency, but the panel met this week to reassess the situation.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 74 countries since about May. So far, deaths from monkeypox have only been reported in Africa, where a more dangerous version of the virus is spreading, mainly in Nigeria and the Congo.
In Africa, monkeypox is mainly spread to people by infected wild animals such as rodents in limited outbreaks that have not usually crossed borders. In Europe, North America and elsewhere, however, monkeypox is spreading among people with no ties to animals or recent travel to Africa.
Dr Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s leading monkeypox expert, said this week that 99% of all cases of monkeypox beyond Africa were in men and that of these, 98% they involved men having sex with men. Experts suspect that outbreaks of monkeypox in Europe and North America were spread through sex in two radishes in Belgium and Spain.
“While I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern for now, this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners,” Tedros said. “This means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies.”
Britain recently downgraded its assessment of monkeypox after seeing no signs of widespread transmission beyond gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men and noting that the disease does not spread easily or cause disease serious
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it supported the WHO’s emergency declaration and hoped it would prompt international action to stamp out the outbreaks. The United States has reported more than 2,800 cases of monkeypox and has sent more than 370,000 doses of vaccine to US states that report cases.
Some experts had questioned whether such a declaration would help, arguing that the disease is not serious enough to warrant attention and that rich countries fighting smallpox already have the funds to do so. Most people recover without the need for medical attention, although the injuries can be painful.
Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, said the WHO’s emergency declaration could help donors such as the World Bank make funds available to stop outbreaks in both the West and Africa.
In the United States, some experts have speculated whether monkeypox could be on the verge of becoming a sexually transmitted disease as entrenched in the country as gonorrhea, herpes and HIV.
“The bottom line is that we’ve seen a shift in the epidemiology of monkeypox where there is now widespread and unexpected transmission,” said Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of public health and epidemiology at Yale University. “There are some genetic mutations in the virus that suggest why this might be happening, but we need a globally coordinated response to control it.”
Ko called for the tests to be expanded immediately, saying there are significant gaps in surveillance.
“The cases we’re seeing are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The window to quickly stop outbreaks in Europe and the United States has probably closed, but it is not too late to prevent monkeypox from causing enormous damage in poorer countries without the resources to handle it.”
The WHO’s Tedros called for the world to “act together in solidarity” when it comes to distributing treatments, tests and vaccines. for monkey pox. The United Nations agency has previously said it is working to create a vaccine-sharing mechanism for the worst-affected countries, but offered few details on how it might work. Unlike the many companies that made vaccines against COVID-19, there is only one manufacturer for the vaccine used against monkeypox, the Bavarian Nordic in Denmark.
Dr Placide Mbala, a virologist who heads the global health department at Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, said he hoped any global effort to stop monkeypox would be equitable. Although countries such as Britain, Canada, Germany and the United States have ordered millions of doses of smallpox vaccine, none has gone to Africa.
“The solution has to be global,” Mbala said, adding that any vaccine sent to Africa would be used to target those most at risk, such as hunters in rural areas.
“Vaccination in the West could help stop the outbreak there, but there will still be cases in Africa,” he said. “Unless the problem is solved here, the risk to the rest of the world will remain.”