WHO Declares Mpox Global Health Emergency. Here’s What to Know

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health emergency on Wednesday due to an mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a number of other African countries. The move is meant to increase funds for a response to the disease and prompt governments to take action.

One reason for the declaration is the emergence of a new virus strain last year, called clade 1b. It has spread rapidly in the DRC, seemingly mainly through sexual networks. It has also been detected in four nearby countries—Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda—that have not reported mpox cases before. Clade 1 infections cause more severe illness and deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC and the reporting of cases in several neighboring countries are very worrying,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says in a statement. “On top of outbreaks of other mpox clades in DRC and other countries in Africa, it’s clear that a coordinated international response is needed to stop these outbreaks and save lives.”

So far this year, there have been 15,600 mpox cases and 537 deaths reported in the DRC, exceeding last year’s total, per the WHO. There have been a suspected 17,000 cases across 13 African countries in 2024 to date, up from around 15,000 cases in 2023 and 7,000 cases in 2022, according to the Africa CDC. People most at risk include women and children younger than 15, per the New York Times’ Apoorva Mandavilli.

Mpox is a disease caused by a virus in the same family as the smallpox virus, per the CDC. It can spread through close personal contact with infected people, as well as via direct contact with infected wild animals. (Formerly called monkeypox, it was first detected in a colony of monkeys but is now thought to originate in rodents.) Touching objects that have been used by someone with mpox can also lead to infection.

People who have been infected often get a rash on their hands, feet, chest, face, mouth or near their genitals. Other symptoms can include fever, chills, exhaustion, muscle aches and respiratory effects.

The WHO previously declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, during an outbreak in 2022, which spread to countries where the virus is not endemic, including the United States. The agency declared the emergency over in 2023 after behavior changes, administration of vaccines and a sustained decline in cases.

PHEICs are declared in situations that are serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected that have public health implications beyond the affected states and may require international action, per the WHO. They are meant to increase funding, public health measures and coordination to slow the spread of a disease, writes NBC News’ Aria Bendix.

Currently, few vaccine doses are available in Africa, according to Maria Cheng of the Associated Press (AP). Vaccine donations are in the works from Japan, the U.S., the European Union and manufacturers, but the volume of doses still falls well short of the need.

“We need to have vaccines. Today, we are just talking about almost 200,000 doses [becoming] available. We need at least ten million doses,” Jean Kaseya, director-general of Africa CDC, tells NPR’s Gabrielle Emanuel. “The vaccine is so expensive—we can put it around $100 per dose. There are not so many countries in Africa that can afford the cost of this vaccine.”

The WHO has released $1.45 million from an emergency fund to combat the outbreak. But the agency estimates $15 million is required to support surveillance, preparedness and response actions.

“It’s a failure of the global community that things had to get this bad to release the resources needed,” Michael Marks, who studies infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says to the AP.

The Africa CDC declared mpox a public health emergency earlier this week. “We urge our international partners to seize this moment to act differently and collaborate closely with Africa CDC to provide the necessary support to our member states,” Kaseya says in a statement.

During 2022’s global mpox outbreak, infections were caused by a different and typically less severe virus strain called clade 2. Cases detected in healthcare facilities at the time mainly, but not exclusively, involved men who have sex with men, according to the WHO.

In the U.S., cases peaked at more than 3,000 per week in the summer of 2022. More recently, there have only been a couple to a handful of cases reported per day. No clade 1 cases have been reported in the U.S. yet. The CDC recommends that people who are exposed or at high risk get vaccinated.

While the 2022 outbreak had a 0.2 percent death rate, the current outbreak’s death rate is around 3 percent, per the New York Times. More than 70 percent of cases in the DRC are in children under 18, Kaseya says to NPR.

“The world has a real opportunity here to act in a decisive manner and not repeat past mistakes, [but] that will take more than an [emergency] declaration,” Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University, tells the AP.

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Will Sullivan is a science writer based in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in Inside Science and NOVA Next.