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The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday that the MPOX outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbouring countries “can be controlled and stopped”, but 121 million euros will be needed over the next six months to fund the international response, AFP reported.
The global strategic plan for preventing and responding to measles outbreaks launched by the World Health Organization covers the period from September 2024 to February 2025, according to a statement. He predicts that $135 million (€121 million) will be needed to finance the international response, which includes the World Health Organization, member states and various partners such as the Africa Centres for Disease Prevention and Control (Africa CDC). WHO will soon launch a funding appeal to meet these financial needs. So far, the organization has drawn $1.5 million from its reserve fund for the emergency. “The smallpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighbouring countries is controllable and stoppable,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement.
The recurrence of MPOX, first detected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the emergence of a new viral variant of the disease (clade 1b) led the World Health Organization to declare on August 14 the highest level of international health alert. The WHO had already made such a decision in 2022, when an epidemic of MPOX caused by clade 2b spread throughout the world. The alert was issued in May 2023. “More than 100,000 confirmed cases have been reported to the World Health Organization since the beginning of the world epidemic of MPOX in 2022. The virus continues to circulate at low levels throughout the world,” said the Director-General of the World Health Organization on Friday while presenting the strategic plan before representatives of the organization’s member states. But he stressed that “there has been an unprecedented increase and geographical expansion of incidence in the African region”. Since January, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has recorded 90% of the cases reported in 2024, including more than 16,000 suspected cases and 575 deaths.
“This resurgence was driven by two different epidemics — in different parts of the country — caused by two strains, or clades, of the MPOX virus,” he explained, but the rapid spread of clade 1b “was the reason I decided to declare an international public health emergency.” Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans but can also be spread from person to person through physical contact. It causes fever, muscle pain and skin lesions.
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