The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the monkeypox outbreak as an “emergency of international concern”.
This announcement is coming after the disease has been reported in more than 70 countries in the world.
The WHO label – a “public health emergency of international concern” – is designed to sound an alarm that a coordinated international response is needed and could unlock funding and global efforts to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments.
The health body advised Governments to raise awareness among doctors and hospitals, take protective measures in suspected cases and educate members of the population on how to protect themselves from infection.
The body’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision to issue the declaration despite a lack of consensus among experts serving on the UN health agency’s emergency committee. It was the first time the chief of the UN health agency has taken such an action.
The DG, while announcing his decision to declare the health emergency during a media briefing in Geneva, confirmed that the committee had failed to reach a consensus, with nine members against and six in favour of the declaration.
He said “We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in the international health regulations”.
“I know this has not been an easy or straightforward process and that there are divergent views among the members” of the committee, he added.
It’s germane to note that a global emergency is WHO’s highest level of alert, but the designation does not necessarily mean a disease is particularly transmissible or lethal.
Harping on the development, WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr Michael Ryan, said the director-general made the decision to put monkeypox in that category to ensure the global community takes the current outbreak seriously.
It should be noted that Monkeypox has been established in parts of Central and West Africa for decades, but it was not known to spark large outbreaks beyond the continent or to spread widely among people until May, when authorities detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
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