The centre of the rising number of cases is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country roughly the size of Western Europe and plagued by decades of conflict, severe poverty and malnutrition, and camps housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Just like the coronavirus, flu and many other pathogens that pose ongoing risks, the virus that causes Mpox is now mutating, making tracking its spread even more difficult.
With this outbreak, Mpox has made “a huge leap in development,” said Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town. “We have every reason to believe that there are many more cases that we have not discovered.”
The last major surge in Mpox cases in 2022 was also declared an international health emergency by the World Health Organization in Geneva. It was caused by a milder strain of the virus known as clade IIb. The new mutated strain is related to a more virulent version called clade I, which appears to spread more quickly in children and adolescents and through sexual contact.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has previously struggled with outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola, cholera and malaria – often with little international help. In the current Mpox outbreak, the government reported an exponential rise in infections last month. The country has developed a vaccination strategy, said Roger Kamba, Congo’s health minister, in a video posted on social media site X.
In a later briefing broadcast on national television, he said 2.5 million people needed to be vaccinated to stop the spread of the disease. That would require 3.5 million doses, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, he added, calling on the international community to provide assistance.
Although smallpox disease is not as deadly as smallpox, it still leads to death in about three to six percent of reported cases. The lesions caused by the infection can lead to blindness, disfigurement and severe pregnancy complications. Since the beginning of the year, more than 500 deaths from the disease have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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WHO declares Mpox a global health emergency as new form of the virus emerges
WHO declares Mpox a global health emergency as new form of the virus emerges
In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where transmission rates are highest, health systems were already extremely fragile before the disease outbreak. Lack of staff and medical supplies further complicates efforts to contain the disease.
Another cause for concern is the possibility that some patients with MPOX are also infected with HIV, which weakens the body’s defenses. Africa has the highest number of HIV infections in the world. Efforts to contain MPOX should focus on better informing the population about the existence of the disease, conducting timely diagnosis and providing vaccines, Oliveira said.
While Mpox has increasingly jumped from its animal hosts to humans in West and Central Africa since the 1970s, “we only start to worry when there is more direct transmission between humans,” says De Oliveira.
