Monkeypox experts discussed Thursday whether the World Health Organization
should classify the outbreak as a global health emergency -- the highest alarm
it can sound.
اضافة اعلان
A second meeting of the WHO's emergency committee on the virus was held to
examine the worsening situation, with nearly 15,400 cases reported from 71
countries, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May outside
the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.
On June 23, the WHO convened an emergency committee of experts to decide if
monkeypox constitutes a so-called Public Health Emergency of International
Concern (PHEIC) -- the UN health agency's highest alert level.
But a majority advised the WHO's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the
situation, at that point, had not met the threshold.
The second meeting was called with case numbers rising further.
"I need your advice in assessing the immediate and mid-term public
health implications," Tedros told the start of the meeting, which lasted
more than six hours.
If the committee advises Tedros that the outbreak constitutes a PHEIC, it
will propose temporary recommendations on how to better prevent and reduce the
spread of the disease and manage the global public health response.
But there is no timetable for when the committee will reach their
conclusions from the meeting or make the outcome public.
- Stigmatisation
fear -
Ninety-five percent of cases have been transmitted through sexual activity,
according to a study of 528 people in 16 countries published in the New England
Journal of Medicine -- the largest research to date.
Overall, 98 percent of infected people were gay or bisexual men, and around
a third were known to have visited sex-on-site venues such as sex parties or
saunas within the previous month.
Tedros said Thursday that this posed a challenge, as in some countries,
"the communities affected face life-threatening discrimination".
"There is a very real concern that men who have sex with men could be
stigmatised or blamed for the outbreak, making the outbreak much harder to
track, and to stop," he told the meeting.
Tedros said the first committee gathering helped delineate the dynamics of
the outbreak, but he remained concerned about the number of cases.
Despite an apparent declining trend in some countries, six nations reported
their first cases last week.
"As the outbreak develops, it's important to assess the effectiveness
of public health interventions in different settings, to better understand what
works, and what doesn't," he said.
Tedros also said information coming from endemic countries in Africa was
"very scant", making it hard to characterise the situation in the
region and design interventions.
A viral infection resembling smallpox and first detected in humans in 1970,
monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than smallpox, which was eradicated
in 1980.
- 'Scary and
exhausting' -
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said that as of
Monday, 7,896 confirmed cases had been reported from 27 countries in the
European Economic Area.
The worst affected were Spain (2,835), Germany (1,924), France (912), the
Netherlands (656) and Portugal (515).
"Particular sexual practices are very likely to have facilitated and
could further facilitate the transmission of monkeypox among MSM groups,"
it said.
Danish company Bavarian Nordic is the lone laboratory manufacturing a
licensed vaccine against monkeypox and jabs are currently in scarce supply.
Loyce Pace, the assistant secretary for global affairs at the US Department
of Health and Human Services, said it was "very hard" for the world
to handle monkeypox on top of Covid-19 and other health crises.
"I know it can be scary... and, frankly, exhausting," she told
reporters at the US mission in Geneva.
However, "we know a lot more about this disease, we've been able to
stop outbreaks previously and we, importantly, have medical counter-measures
and other tools available".
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