A World Health Organization committee of experts met Thursday to decide
whether the monkeypox outbreak constitutes a global health emergency.
The outcome of the in-private meeting will be issued on Friday at the
earliest, the
WHO said.
اضافة اعلان
A surge of monkeypox cases has been detected since May outside of the West
and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic. Most of
the new cases have been in Western Europe.
More than 3,200 confirmed cases and one death have now been reported to the
WHO from 48 countries in total this year, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
told the start of the meeting.
Tedros announced on June 14 that he would convene an emergency committee to
assess whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of
international concern (PHEIC) -- the highest alarm that the UN health agency
can sound.
Besides providing a PHEIC assessment, the committee members were set to give
the WHO and its member states advice on how to better prevent the spread of the
disease and manage their response.
- Transmission
fears -
Tedros told Thursday's meeting that all countries needed to strengthen their
capacities to prevent onward transmission of monkeypox, using surveillance,
contact-tracing and isolating infected patients.
"The outbreak in newly-affected countries continues to be primarily
among men who have sex with men, and who have reported recent sex with new or
multiple partners," he said, via video-link from the Commonwealth summit
in the Rwandan capital Kigali.
"Person-to-person transmission is ongoing and is likely
underestimated."
He said that in addition to the 3,200-plus confirmed cases, almost 1,500
suspected cases of monkeypox and around 70 suspected deaths have been reported
in central Africa this year.
The emergency committee will provide Tedros with a PHEIC recommendation, and
an assessment of the risk to human health, the risk of international spread and
the risk of interference with international traffic.
Tedros will then make the final determination on whether a PHEIC should be
declared, based on their advice.
There have been six PHEIC declarations since 2009, the last being for
Covid-19 in 2020 -- though the sluggish global response to the alarm bell still
rankles at the WHO's Geneva headquarters.
A PHEIC was declared after a third emergency committee meeting on January
30. But it was only after March 11, when Tedros described the rapidly-worsening
situation as a pandemic, that many countries seemed to wake up to the danger.
- Testing troubles
-
On the number of cases, "it is a little difficult to see how much of
this is the tip of the iceberg," said Philippe Duneton, head of the
Unitaid agency, which invests in ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases.
"There are no easy-to-use tests to detect it. This is essentially done
at the clinical level. So an important issue is to have testing which is done
earlier and which makes it possible to detect cases, particularly among case
contacts," he told AFP.
The normal initial symptoms of monkeypox include a high fever, swollen lymph
nodes and a blistery chickenpox-like rash.
The WHO's 16-member emergency committee on monkeypox is chaired by
Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who is a former
director of the WHO's Vaccines and Immunisation Department.
It is co-chaired by Nicola Low, an associate professor of epidemiology and
public health medicine from Bern University.
The other 14 members are from institutions in Brazil, Britain, Japan,
Morocco, Nigeria, Russia, Senegal, Switzerland, Thailand and the United States.
Eight advisers from Canada, the DR Congo, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland
and the United States also took part in Thursday's hybrid meeting.
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