MPOX epidemic in Africa, public health emergency declared

Photo: Archives Agence France-Presse Symptoms of mpox in 1997.

Hillary Orinde – Agence France-Presse

Published at 11:16

• Africa

The African Union’s health agency on Tuesday declared a “public health emergency,” its highest level of alert, over the continent’s growing outbreak of monkeypox, issuing a “clear call to action” to halt its spread.

A total of 38,465 cases of the disease, formerly known as monkeypox, have been reported in 16 African countries since January 2022, with 1,456 deaths, including a 160% increase in cases in 2024 compared with the previous year, according to data released last week by the health agency Africa CDC.

“MPOX has now crossed borders, affecting thousands of people across our continent […] I announce, with a heavy heart but with an unwavering commitment to our people, to our African citizens, that we are declaring MPOX a continental public health emergency,” Africa CDC President Jean Kasenya said at a press conference.

“This declaration is not a mere formality, it is a clear call to action. It is a recognition that we can no longer afford to be reactive. We must be proactive and aggressive in our efforts to contain and eliminate this scourge,” he added.

This announcement, which will notably make it possible to release funds for access to vaccines and to have a continental response, comes on the eve of the meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee to assess whether to declare the highest level of health alert at the international level in the face of this disease.

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New strain

Africa is facing the spread of a new strain of the virus, detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in September 2023 and called “Clade Ib”, more deadly and more transmissible than the previous ones.

Cases have been recorded in various areas of the continent (Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, DRC, Rwanda, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa South…).

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• In Africa, the resurgence of cases of mpox is worrying

According to the Africa CDC, the fatality rate of the virus is over 3% and children under 15 are the most affected, accounting for at least 60% of cases.

Pox is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans but is also transmitted through close physical contact with a person infected with the virus.

The “Clade Ib” strain causes rashes all over the body, while previous strains were characterized by localized rashes and lesions on the mouth, face or genitals.

Pox was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC (formerly Zaire), with the spread of the Clade I subtype (of which the new variant is a mutation), mainly limited since then to countries in western and central Africa, with patients generally being contaminated by infected animals.

In 2022, a global epidemic, carried by the clade 2 subtype, spread to around a hundred countries where the disease was not endemic, mainly affecting homosexual and bisexual men.

The WHO then decreed maximum alert in July 2022 in the face of this outbreak of cases in the world, then lifted it less than a year later, in May 2023. The epidemic had caused some 140 deaths out of approximately 90,000 cases.