African Health Institutions Declares Mpox as a Medical Emergency in the Continent
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August 13, 2024 Hour: 4:49 pm
“We declare today this continental security public health emergency to mobilize our institutions, our collective will and our resources to act quickly and decisively.”,
Africa’s public health agency declared a continental mpox emergency (formerly known as monkey smallpox) on Tuesday and announced that it will present a common response plan in the coming weeks.
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Africa: CDC Calls for the Declaration of a Public Health Emergency Following the Outbreak of Mpox
“We declare today this continental security public health emergency to mobilize our institutions, our collective will and our resources to act quickly and decisively.”, said the Director General of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Africa (CDC of Africa), Jean Kaseya, at a telematics press conference.
Kaseya urged the member states of the African Union, which is responsible for the African CDC, to “fast track emergency clearance by mpox, which will play a key role in safeguarding public health and ensuring rapid access to life-saving interventions”.
By 2024, the continent has recorded more than 15,000 infections and 461 deaths from this infection in 18 different countries.
The CDC in Africa warned last Thursday of the rapid rate of spread of the disease and advanced their intention to declare a continental-scale emergency, its highest form of alert.
According to data then released by Kaseya, between 2023 and 2024 there has been a 160% increase in mpox cases in Africa, that is, this year will be “more than twice as many as there were in 2023 and even more”.
At a press conference on Tuesday, the director of Africa’s largest public health agency again pointed out that more than 10 million doses of the vaccine would be needed to contain the emergency, a figure far from the 200,000 currently available.
“We have a clear plan to guarantee more than ten million doses,” he said, of which three million will arrive in 2024, although he did not give details about the project.
Cases of this disease, whose main infectious focus is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and was already an international health emergency between 2022 and 2023, are multiplying in Africa.
Cases have been reported for the first time in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, while also in DRC cases have been observed in provinces that had not been previously affected.
The Central African Republic was the last African country to declare an outbreak of mpox on 1 August.
Autor: CC
Fuente: EFE-Africanews