Spread of monkeypox has become an emergency, African officials say

African health authorities say they view the expanding monkeypox outbreak there as an emergency and are calling on wealthy nations to share the world’s limited vaccine supply to avoid apparent equity issues during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Monkeypox has been sickening people in parts of Central and West Africa for decades, but a lack of laboratory diagnosis and weak surveillance means many cases go undetected across the continent.

So far this year, African countries have reported more than 1,800 suspected cases, including more than 70 deaths, but only 109 have been laboratory confirmed.

“For us, this particular outbreak represents an emergency,” said Ahmed Ogwell, acting director of the African Center for Disease Control.

“We hope that monkeypox can now be treated as an emergency so it doesn’t cause more pain and suffering,” he said.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said its emergency committee had concluded that the expanding monkeypox outbreak was a cause for concern, but had yet to warrant a declaration of a global health emergency.

The UN health agency said it would reconsider its decision if the disease continued to spread across more borders, showed signs of increasing severity or started to infect vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and children.

Globally, more than 5,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 51 countries, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most of these cases occurred in Europe. No deaths have been reported outside Africa.

In Africa, monkeypox has spread to countries where it has never been seen before, including South Africa, Ghana and Morocco, the WHO said.

But more than 90 percent of infections on the continent are in Congo and Nigeria, according to WHO Africa director Dr Moeti Matshidiso.

These vaccines were primarily developed to stop smallpox, a related disease, and most are not licensed for use against monkeypox in Africa.

Vaccines have not been used before to try to wipe out monkeypox epidemics in Africa, and officials have largely relied on measures such as contact tracing and isolation.

“We want to see the global focus on monkeypox be the catalyst for defeating the disease once and for all in Africa,” she said on Thursday.

Similar to last year’s scramble for a Covid-19 vaccine, countries with vaccine supplies to stop monkeypox have yet to share them with African countries, the WHO noted.

“We don’t make any donations to (poor) countries,” said Fiona Braka, head of WHO’s Africa emergency team.

“We know that those countries that have some stockpiles are mostly keeping stockpiles for their own populations.”

The WHO said last month that it was working on a mechanism to share vaccines with countries hardest hit by the outbreak, with some worrying that it could go to wealthy countries such as Britain, Germany and France, some of the agency’s biggest donors. and already have their own country. Supplies.

While most cases of monkeypox in Europe and North America occur in men who are gay, bisexual, or sleep with other men, this is not the case in Africa.

WHO’s Tieble Traore said the number of monkeypox cases was almost evenly split between males and females, according to detailed data from Ghana.

“We haven’t seen transmission among MSM,” he said.

In the largest outbreak of monkeypox outside Africa, the vast majority of cases have occurred in men, and officials noted that it has only spread among “gay, bisexual or MSM-specific networks.”

Scientists have warned that anyone is at risk of contracting monkeypox if they have had close physical contact with an infected patient or their clothing or sheets.

In Africa, monkeypox is mainly transmitted to humans through infected wild animals such as rodents or primates.

It usually does not trigger widespread outbreaks or rapid human-to-human transmission.