As the World Health Organization calculates whether to declare monkeypox a global health emergency, infectious disease experts are calling on health officials to be more proactive and start increasing vaccinations and surveillance, especially in African nations. where the virus is most common.
The WHO convened its emergency committee on Thursday to consider whether the monkey’s smallpox outbreak should be declared a “public health emergency of international interest,” the highest alert level in the world. WHO.
But the UN agency faces criticism for its treatment of monkeypox: it only comes into action after the disease begins to spread to wealthy Western nations.
Read more: WHO to discuss declaration of monkeypox outbreak as a global health emergency
Viral disease that causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions is endemic in parts of Africa, meaning it is constantly present in certain regions. The continent has reported just over 1,500 suspicious cases since early 2022, of which 70 have been fatal, according to the WHO.
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In comparison, Canada has confirmed more than 200 cases, most of them in Quebec, and has not had any deaths.
“There are more cases occurring in Africa annually than have already been reported outside Africa right now. And there are more deaths occurring in Africa from monkeypox than in the rest of the world, ”said Dr. Sameer Elsayed, an infectious disease physician and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University.
Read more: Monkeypox in Canada: 211 confirmed cases nationwide
That’s why he believes Africa should get the lion’s share of the resources to deal with monkeypox, and that should include mass vaccinations, he says.
“I think Africa should be looked at with high and high priority,” he said.
“It should be a massive vaccination campaign for monkeypox with the newest vaccines for people on the African continent, especially in high endemic areas.”
He is not alone.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a physician and infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, says she also believes more people living in regions where monkeypox is more common should be vaccinated.
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“This will stop it from endemic regions in this non-endemic outbreak.”
That the WHO is just taking the monkey’s smallpox seriously is “deeply problematic,” Gandhi says, as the disease is spreading and killing people in central and West Africa for years.
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“It has been circulating since 1958. There are growing outbreaks, a serious one in Nigeria, for example in 2017, and it is only essentially when this has affected high-income countries that the WHO is committed to it.”
Experts who have worked on monkeypox in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo have long noted the increase in cases while the population’s immunity to smallpox viruses has been declining due to lack of vaccination. That’s why the world shouldn’t be surprised by current outbreaks, said Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA in California who has studied monkeypox for two decades.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how quickly a deadly virus can spread around the world when the right conditions are in place, so health officials should learn from it and start being more proactive, he said. .
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“When it comes to infectious diseases, particularly those viruses that have the potential to spread globally, it’s much easier to stay out of trouble than to have to get out of trouble.”
In addition to providing vaccines, health officials should also increase resources to study the disease and do more surveillance to better understand monkeypox and know why it is spreading in new and unusual ways, Rimoin said.
Read more: Monkeypox outbreak: the number of cases increases to more than 3,200 worldwide, says WHO
“We’ve given this virus a lot of clues to be able to spread. We haven’t been looking for it as closely as we should be,” he said.
“I think we need to learn the lessons we’ve learned with COVID-19 and it’s much better to invest early to deal with these viruses, to do the kind of surveillance that is needed to be regularly updating our knowledge. about viruses “.
Good disease surveillance is as important in poorer countries as it is in “high-resource environments,” he added.
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Like many countries in the world, Canada and the United States stopped vaccinating the general population against smallpox around 1972, which means that many on this continent are very susceptible to smallpox viruses such as smallpox. of the monkey.
As scientists expect to see more infectious diseases emerging due to factors such as climate change, deforestation and globalization, the world should begin to better prepare for new outbreaks, Elsayed said.
Read more: Monkeypox has Canadian researchers fighting. Why, and to what extent is it contagious?
That is why, in addition to calling for vaccines and more resources to fight smallpox in Africa, Elsayed believes that governments in developed countries should also consider more options to protect citizens from smallpox viruses, including the possibility of reintroduce mass smallpox vaccinations.
“I think these vaccines should be re-incorporated into the general population … but not (only) for the smallpox of the monkey, but also to protect the world from perhaps a smallpox pandemic that may happen in the future. , or even another virus that is closely related to monkeypox but has not reached humans, “Elsaed said.
He stressed that this should only be considered after first addressing the most urgent needs in Africa.
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Rimoin noted that when the world stopped getting smallpox vaccine, it opened a “vacuum of immunity” for populations to become vulnerable to it again. And with the emergence of a number of new smallpox viruses in different parts of the world, such as mouse smallpox, bovine smallpox and camel smallpox, the world is not immune to new outbreaks, he said.
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“Now do we really have to think about how important it is for us to be able to keep smallpox viruses out of the population?” she said. “What are the interests in allowing this virus to spread? And then act accordingly.”
-With archives of Global News journalist Reggie Checcini and Reuters.
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