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The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus a global emergency on Wednesday following the outbreak of the Mpox virus in Africa. “This is something that should concern us all… The potential for further spread in Africa and beyond is very concerning,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, according to newsweek.com.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) previously declared the recent MPOX outbreak a public health emergency. More than 500 people have died from the virus in Africa. Last week, Ghebreyesus further spoke about MPOX, also known as monkeypox, saying that “two MPOX vaccines have been approved by national regulators listed by the World Health Organization and recommended by the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, or SAGE.” He said: “We have initiated emergency use approval for both vaccines, which will accelerate access to vaccines, especially for low-income countries that have not yet issued their own regulatory approval.”
Mpox, a disease transmitted from animals to humans, but can also spread from person to person “Mpox is a zoonosis, a disease transmitted from animals to humans, and cases are often found near tropical forests where there are animals carrying the virus,” the World Health Organization says. “The disease can also spread from person to person. It can be spread through contact with body fluids, lesions on the skin or inner mucous surfaces such as the mouth or throat, respiratory droplets and contaminated objects.”
“We are now facing a situation where (MPOX) is a threat to more of our neighbors both within our borders and in Central Africa,” Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious disease expert and chair of the Africa CDC’s emergency response team, said of the current virus outbreak last week. The World Health Organization declared the virus a global emergency in 2022 after it spread to 70 different countries. However, in that outbreak, less than 1% of those infected died. “It’s a failure of the international community that the situation has become so bad that the necessary resources cannot be released,” Michael Marks, a professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the Associated Press.
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