Formerly known as monkey pox, the virus has infected more than 15,000 people and killed 461 in Africa this year. Public health officials in the continent call it a ‘menace that knows no boundaries’
Christian Musema, a laboratory nurse, takes a sample from a child declared a suspected case Mpox - an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus that spark-off a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes and fever; at the the treatment centre in Munigi, following Mpox cases in Nyiragongo territory near Goma, North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo July 19, 2024.Arlette Bashizi/Reuters
With cases of mpox now spreading to infants as young as two weeks old, Africa’s leading health agency has declared a health emergency on the continent, warning that the potentially fatal virus is rapidly crossing borders and becoming a global threat.
About 15,000 cases of mpox – formerly known as monkey pox – have been recorded in Africa this year, including more than 2,000 cases in the past week alone. More than 460 people have died this year from the virus, which is transmitted by close contact, causing fever, rashes, lesions, headaches and fatigue.
Cases are also rising in Canada, with Toronto announcing on Tuesday that 93 mpox cases were confirmed in the city by the end of last month, compared to 21 cases in the same period last year. City authorities urged high-risk people to get vaccinated.
In Africa, mpox cases have surged by 160 per cent this year, compared to the same period last year. Most cases are a dangerous new variant, with a higher death rate than in an earlier outbreak in 2022. The fatality rate is now estimated at 3 to 4 per cent, far higher than in previous outbreaks.
Canada not planning to share mpox vaccines, as Africa warns of ‘another pandemic’
More than 90 per cent of cases on the continent are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but new cases have been reported for the first time in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda within the past month. About 70 per cent of the cases in Congo are children, who are more likely to die than adults.
“We declare today this public health emergency of continental security to mobilize our institutions, our collective will, and our resources to act swiftly and decisively,” said Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), in a briefing on Tuesday.
“Families have been torn apart, and the pain and suffering have touched every corner of our continent,” he said.
“This is not just an African issue. Mpox is a global threat, a menace that knows no boundaries.”
Scientists acknowledge that the official numbers are greatly underestimating the true scale of the crisis. In DRC, most suspected cases have never been tested. “The evidence we have on the number of cases, the number of deaths, is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African epidemiologist who chairs a scientific advisory committee on mpox for the Africa CDC.
“We have limited surveillance, we have limited capacity to do the testing and contact-tracing and reporting,” he told the briefing.
In Congo, the spread of mpox has been accelerated by overcrowding in hospitals and clinics, and in camps for hundreds of thousands of displaced people who have fled from years of war, especially in eastern Congo.
“The worst case I’ve seen is that of a six-week-old baby who was just two weeks old when he contracted mpox and has now been in our care for four weeks,” said an epidemiologist and mpox expert at a health agency in South Kivu, a province in eastern Congo.
“He got infected because hospital overcrowding meant he and his mother were forced to share a room with someone else who had the virus, which was undiagnosed at the time,” the epidemiologist said. “He had rashes all over his body, his skin was starting to blacken, and he had a high fever. His parents were stunned by his condition and were scared he was dying.”
The Globe and Mail is not naming the epidemiologist because he is not authorized to speak on behalf of his organization, a Congolese partner of Save the Children, a British-based humanitarian agency.
Jean Kakuru Biyambo, 48, a father of six from the Muja internally displaced persons camp, poses for a photograph outside his room at the Goma general hospital where he has been receiving treatment against Mpox - an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus that spark-off a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes and fever; following Mpox cases in Nyiragongo territory, in Goma, North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo July 16, 2024.Arlette Bashizi/Reuters
Some health centres around the city of Goma, in eastern Congo, are operating at 4,000 per cent of their capacity because the fragile health system cannot cope with the rapid spread of mpox, Save the Children said.
It said the virus is accompanied by social stigma because of a perception that it is only spread by sexual contact, when in reality it can be spread by skin-to-skin contact, airborne contact or contaminated clothing and cooking utensils.
The virus is spreading swiftly from tent to tent in the vast camps for displaced people around Goma, where conditions are unsanitary and there is a lack of clean water and health care, the agency said.
“The health system is already collapsing under the strain of soaring rates of malnutrition, measles and cholera, coupled with the residual impacts of past Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks,” said Greg Ramm, country director for Save the Children in Congo in a statement.
“To add a new deadly virus that is aggressively attacking children to the mix is a cruel stroke of fate.”
Africa needs at least 10 million doses of vaccines to fight the current outbreak, but only about 200,000 doses are currently available, the Africa CDC says.
Some countries and manufacturers have donated vaccines to the African agency. Canada has a large stockpile of the vaccines, but federal health officials told The Globe that there are no plans to share the vaccines with other countries. African countries have not formally requested a donation from Canada, and the federal government has not declared a surplus of vaccines, they said.
Mpox particles, red, found within an infected cell, blue, cultured in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md., are shown in a colorized electron microscope handout image.HO/The Canadian Press
If African countries had received vaccines and other forms of support from international partners in 2022 when the previous mpox outbreak was declared a global emergency, its crisis today would not be nearly as bad, Dr. Kaseya said. Africa now needs US$4-billion in support to contain the latest outbreak, he said.
A committee of international health experts is meeting on Wednesday to advise the World Health Organization on whether to declare a global health emergency in response to the rapid spread of mpox.
In Canada, health officials are keeping a close watch on the number of mpox cases here.
Toronto Public Health “continues to monitor the transmission of mpox in the city and trends provincially, nationally, and globally and encourage individuals at risk to get immunized,” said Rita Shahin, TPH associate medical officer of health. Cases have been increasing in late June and July following major events and festivals, the agency said on Tuesday.
The virus can spread through any skin-to-skin contact, and sometimes through the air, but TPH identified the most affected demographic in the city as gay and bisexual men who have had sex with other men.
- With a report from Xiao Xu