Africa: 45,330 Cases and 1,014 Deaths From Mpox in 18 Countries
Red Cross personnel cleaning up mpox. Photo: EFE/EPA/Moise Kasereka/Archive
October 24, 2024 Hour: 3:28 pm
Africa has recorded 45,327 cases and 1,014 deaths from mpox since the beginning of 2024 in 18 countries on the continent, the African Union’s public health agency (AU) reported on Thursday.
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Democratic Republic of Congo begins vaccination campaign against mpox virus
As epidemiologist Ngashi Ngongo, head of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Executive Office, explained in a telematics press conference, this means that, just this year, There are already 400% more confirmed cases than in all of 2023.
The new death toll is below last week’s reported 1,100 after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda reported that some deaths had been reflected in duplicate.
DRC, the epicenter of the epidemic, and neighbouring Burundi account for 96% of the 1,001 new infections confirmed in the region in the last week, while Gabon, Guinea-Conakry, Rwanda, Cameroon and South Africa have not reported any new cases in the past four weeks.
As for vaccination against the disease, Ngongo explained that it has been confirmed to send about 5.6 million doses to the continent, including 2,5 million from the vaccine produced by Danish pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic and another 3 million from the drug of Japanese KM Biologics.
The CDC in Africa declared on 13 August the mpox as a “continental security public health emergency” and, the following day, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the international health alert for the disease.
The WHO alarm refers to the rapid spread and high mortality in Africa of the new variant (clade Ib), of which a first case outside the continent was identified in Sweden in a person who travelled to an area of Africa where the virus circulates intensively.
Autor: OSG
Fuente: EFE - CDC Africa