LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak of syphilis in Congo and elsewhere in Africa a global emergency, with confirmed cases in children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new form of the virus spreading. Few vaccine doses are available on the continent.
Earlier this week, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the outbreaks of mpox a public health emergency, with more than 500 deaths, and called for international help to stop the spread of the virus.
“This is something that should concern us all… The risk of further spread in Africa and beyond is very worrying,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The Africa CDC previously said that monkeypox, also known as monkey pox, has been detected in 13 countries this year, with more than 96% of all cases and deaths occurring in Congo. Cases are up 160% and deaths are up 19% compared to the same period last year. So far, there have been more than 14,000 cases and 524 people have died.
LEARN MORE: What you need to know about the public health emergency linked to MPOX in Africa
“We are now in a situation where MPOX is a risk to many other neighboring countries in and around Central Africa,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious disease expert who chairs the Africa CDC’s emergency group. He said the new version of MPOX spreading from Congo appears to have a mortality rate of about 3 to 4 percent.
In 2022, the WHO declared mpox a global emergency after it spread to more than 70 countries that had not previously reported cases of mpox, primarily affecting gay and bisexual men. In this outbreak, less than 1% of people died.
Michael Marks, professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said declaring these latest outbreaks of MPOX in Africa an emergency was justified if it could lead to more support to contain them.
“It is a failure of the international community that the situation had to become so dire to unlock the necessary resources,” he said.
Africa CDC officials said nearly 70% of cases in Congo are among children under 15, who also account for 85% of deaths.
Jacques Alonda, an epidemiologist working in Congo with international charities, said he and other experts were particularly concerned about the spread of mpox in refugee camps in the conflict-ravaged east of the country.
“The worst case I’ve seen is a six-week-old baby who was only two weeks old when he contracted MPOX,” Alonda said, adding that the baby had been in their care for a month. “He got infected because the hospital was overcrowded and he and his mother had to share a room with another person who had the virus, and who was not diagnosed.”
Save the Children said Congo’s health system was already “collapsing” under the pressure of malnutrition, measles and cholera.
The UN health agency said that mpox was recently identified for the first time in four East African countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. All of these outbreaks are linked to the one in Congo. In Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa, health authorities have reported outbreaks of a different, less dangerous version of mpox that has spread worldwide in 2022.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadliest form of mpox, which can kill up to 10% of the population, in a Congolese mining town, and they fear it could spread more easily. mpox is mainly transmitted through close contact with infected people, including sexually.
Unlike previous outbreaks of MPOX, where lesions were mainly seen on the chest, hands and feet, the new form causes milder symptoms and lesions on the genitals. This makes it harder to detect, meaning people can also infect others without knowing they are infected.
Jean Kakuru Biyambo, 48, a father of six from Muja camp for internally displaced people, poses for a photo outside his room at Goma General Hospital where he is receiving treatment for Mpox – an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus that causes a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes and fever; following cases of Mpox in Nyiragongo territory, in Goma, North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo, July 16, 2024. Photo by Arlette Bashizi/REUTERS
Before the 2022 outbreak, the disease was mainly seen in sporadic outbreaks in central and west Africa, when people came into close contact with infected wild animals.
During the 2022 outbreak, Western countries were largely successful in stopping the spread of the MPOX virus with vaccines and treatments, but very few of these were available in Africa.
Marks, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that in the absence of MPOX vaccines licensed in the West, authorities could consider vaccinating the population against smallpox, a related disease. “We need a large supply of vaccine to be able to vaccinate the populations most at risk,” he said, adding that this would include sex workers, children and adults living in areas affected by the outbreak.
Congo has not received any of the MPOX vaccines it requested.
Congolese authorities said they have requested 4 million doses, Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of the Committee for the Fight Against Monkey Pox in Congo, told The Associated Press. Osako said those doses would be primarily for children under 18.
“The United States and Japan are the two countries that have positioned themselves to donate vaccines to our country,” Osako said.
Dr Dimie Ogoina, a Nigerian MPOX expert and chair of the WHO emergency committee, said there were still significant gaps in understanding how MPOX spreads in Africa. He said knowing the key risk factors for transmission would help guide vaccination strategies.
Although the WHO emergency declaration is intended to spur donor agencies and countries to action, the global response to previous declarations has been mixed.
Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University, said the WHO’s latest emergency declaration for mpox “did little to move the needle” in getting things like diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines to Africa.
“The world has a real opportunity here to act decisively and not repeat the mistakes of the past, (but) it will require more than a declaration (of emergency),” Titanji said.
Associated Press writers Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, Christina Malkia in Kinshasa, Congo, and Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
