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The World Health Organisation (WHO) will convene a meeting of its Emergency Committee on November 22 to determine whether mpox remains a global health crisis, it said in a statement on Monday. In August, the disease which continues to spread in Africa was classified by the United Nations health body as a public health emergency of international concern, which represents the highest form of alert. This followed the spread of a new variant of the virus, called clade Ib, in parts of the continent.
There have been 46,794 confirmed and suspected cases in Africa this year through November 3, including 1,081 deaths, the WHO said in a report issued on Monday. The most affected country is the Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by Burundi and Uganda, it said. In the Congo region, where the new and more infectious variant of mpox was first detected, cases of the disease appear to be "plateauing," MedPage Today reported on Monday citing a WHO report.
According to the report, while the overall number of infections shows a general upward trend, the situation in South Kivu — a hotspot for the virus among sex workers and miners in the gold mining town of Kamituga — seems to have stabilised. Hwowever, the surrounding areas of the country, along with Burundi and Ugandam continue to see rising cases. The WHO emphasised that limited testing is hampering efforts to fully understand how exactly the virus is spreading.
According to data from last week, Congo reported fewer than 100 laboratory-confirmed mpox cases, down from nearly 400 in July. In recent weeks, experts say that infections appear to be stabilising, offering a chance for health authorities to definitively stamp out the outbreak. Mpox can spread through close contact.
Usually mild, it is fatal in rare cases. It causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body. Initial vaccine doses were allocated this month for the nine African countries hardest hit.
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