Africa has recorded 77.888 cases of Mpox, of which 16.767 were laboratory-confirmed, with 1.321 deaths occurring in 21 countries since the beginning of 2024, the African Union's public health agency announced this Thursday.

“We are once again sending a strong message that mpox remains a serious public health emergency in Africa.”

The director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), John Kaseya, said this Thursday at a press conference on the evolution of the disease.

Of the countries that have registered outbreaks on the continent, 13 are in the “active phase”, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Angola’s neighboring country that continues to be the epicenter of the epidemic. The Central African region is, in fact, responsible for 85% of infections and 99,2% of deaths., according to the Africa CDC.

Meanwhile, eight countries are in the so-called “controlled phase”, including four, South Africa (neighboring Mozambique), Gabon, Morocco and Zimbabwe that have not recorded new cases in the last 90 days.

Kaseya said that in the first three months of 2025, the AU public health agency wants to step up the response in countries “focus” of the outbreak, the DRC, Uganda and Burundi, with a deployment of 80 epidemiologists and 2.400 additional community health workers.

Furthermore, following the slowdown in vaccination against the disease in early December, Kaseya announced a new strategy to accelerate immunization that, instead of prioritizing contacts of patients, will focus on mass vaccination of communities in the most affected areas.

While three countries began the vaccination process last year, the DRC, Rwanda, and Nigeria have already been allocated doses to six others but have not yet received them, and the rest are awaiting allocation and shipment of the drugs.

The AU's public health agency declared MPOX a continental public health emergency on August 13, and the following day, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced an international health alert for the disease.

The WHO alert refers to the rapid spread and high mortality in Africa of the new variant (clade Ib), of which several cases have been identified outside the continent in people who traveled to areas of Africa where the virus is circulating intensely. In Europe, the most recent confirmed case was in France, at the beginning of the year, in the capital of Brittany, Rénnes.

This variant differs from the clade II variant that caused a violent outbreak in Africa in 2022, as well as hundreds of cases in Europe, North America, and countries in other regions, and which has already led to the declaration of an international health emergency between 2022 and 2023.

Mpox is an infectious disease that can cause a painful rash, swollen lymph nodes, fever, headaches, muscle aches, back pain, and lack of energy.

Picture: © 2024 Glody Murhabazi