The World Health Organization is ready to decide whether to declare monkeypox as a global health emergency, prompting criticism from leading African scientists who say it has been a crisis in its region for years.
Deliberations and scrutiny of the WHO response to the outbreak follow concerns about how the United Nations agency and governments around the world managed COVID-19 in early 2020.
A “public health emergency of international interest” is the WHO’s highest level of alert.
The agency does not declare pandemics, but began using the term to describe COVID-19 in March 2020.
For many governments, this, more than the previous WHO declaration of emergency in January, was the time when they began to take real steps to try to contain COVID-19, which turned out to be too late to mark the difference.
Monkeypox does not spread as easily as COVID-19 and vaccines and treatments are available, unlike coronavirus when it arose.
But he has still raised the alarm.
The number of cases of the current outbreak outside Africa has exceeded 3,000 in more than 40 countries, according to a Reuters count, largely among men who have sex with men, since it was first reported in the May.
There have been no reports of deaths.
Viral disease, which causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions, is endemic in parts of Central and West Africa.
The continent has reported about 1,500 suspicious cases since early 2022, of which 66 have been fatal, according to official data.
“When a disease affects developing countries, it is not (apparently) an emergency. It only becomes an emergency when developed countries are affected,” said Professor Emmanuel Nakoune, acting director of the Pasteur Institute in Bangui. , Central African Republic, leading the post. a test of a monkeypox treatment.
Still, Nakoune said that if the WHO declares an emergency in the case of monkeypox, it would still be an important step.
“If there is a political will to share the means of response equitably between developed and developing countries …, each country will be able to benefit,” he said.
In an online briefing with reporters on Thursday, the acting director of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, said the number of smallpox and death cases was already at “levels emergency “on the continent.
The WHO will convene a closed meeting of experts at 12 noon in Geneva.
It is not yet clear when the decision will be announced.
Thursday’s emergency committee meeting includes experts from the hardest-hit regions, who have also consulted with scientists, including Nakoune.
They will make a recommendation to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who makes the final decision on whether to call for an emergency.
The move works primarily to sound the alarm and may call for more WHO guidance as well as focus attention among member countries.
The WHO has already provided detailed guidance on the outbreak and said it is working on a mechanism to share treatments and vaccines.