A second person has been diagnosed with mpox outside of Africa as the World Health Organisation declared a public health emergency of international concern
A second person has been confirmed to have contracted the deadly new mpox strain outside of Africa as the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared it a “public health emergency”.
An upsurge of cases of the disease – previously known as monkeypox – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and other African nations has raised alarm worldwide. This week the WHO declared it a public health emergency of international concern – the same classification used in the past for Covid-19, Ebola outbreaks.
So far no cases of this new strain of mpox sweeping across Africa have been seen in the UK – but now a second case has been found elsewhere. A man in Thailand tested positive this week following an earlier diagnosis in Sweden.
Thongchai Keeratihattayakorn, Thailand’s director-general of the Department of Disease Control said the patient was “infected with the Clade 1b strain of monkeypox”, according to SkyNews.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is an infectious disease caused by a virus. It can cause flu-like symptoms including fever, muscle aches, and a skin rash or pus-filled lesions that can last two to four weeks.
It can be passed on through contact with someone who has the infection or with infected animals. In the UK, cases of mpox have mainly been seen among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.
WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr Matshidiso Moeti said, “Significant efforts are already underway in close collaboration with communities and governments, with our country teams working on the frontlines to help reinforce measures to curb mpox. With the growing spread of the virus, we’re scaling up further through coordinated international action to support countries bring the outbreaks to an end.”
Committee Chair Professor Dimie Ogoina added: “The current upsurge of mpox in parts of Africa, along with the spread of a new sexually transmissible strain of the monkeypox virus, is an emergency, not only for Africa, but for the entire globe. Mpox, originating in Africa, was neglected there, and later caused a global outbreak in 2022. It is time to act decisively to prevent history from repeating itself.”
In the past month, more than 100 laboratory-confirmed cases of Clade 1b in countries that have not reported Mpox before. They include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.
There are two major strains of Mpox known as Clade 1 and Clade 2. Clade 1, which has been detected in Europe, is the more severe strain of the virus and has led to hundreds of deaths this year alone.
Caused by an Orthopoxvirus, mpox was first detected in humans in 1970, in the DRC. The disease is considered endemic to countries in central and west Africa.
