WHO declares the end of the international health emergency for monkeypox

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared this Thursday the end of the international emergency due to the outbreak of monkeypox or monkeypox, declared in July last year due to a disease that has affected at least 87,000 people in 111 countries, with 140 deceased.

The decision was announced at a press conference by the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a day after the meeting of the emergency committee that analyzed the situation of the outbreak on a quarterly basis, whose cases have been reduced by 90 percent in recent years. last three months.

The international emergency for this disease, called mpox by the WHO, rises six days after this UN agency did the same in the case of the covid-19 pandemic, also in response to the decline in cases and deaths, due to which only maintains this level of maximum alert for polio.

“I am pleased to declare that mpox is no longer an international emergency, but as with covid-19, that does not mean that it has ceased to be a public health challenge,” Tedros said today, noting that “the virus is still affects communities in all regions, including Africa,” where the disease is endemic.

The Ethiopian expert added that monkeypox continues to pose risks for certain patients, such as HIV carriers, while the fact that it continues to spread among people traveling internationally “shows that the threat continues.”

For this reason, Tedros called on the national health networks to maintain their capabilities for tracking and diagnosing possible cases “in order to act quickly if necessary”, reinforcing their integration into health systems.

At the same press conference, the vice-president of the monkeypox emergency committee, Nicola Low, recalled that the first cases of the outbreak occurred a year ago now (in the United Kingdom) and that the peak of infections occurred in July and August.

“Since then, the reduction in the number of infections has been impressive, the result of the action of public health networks, international cooperation and affected communities,” he said.

Many of those affected were men who have sex with other men, which led the WHO to fear that the outbreak would lead to cases of discrimination and homophobia as in the past occurred with HIV-AIDS, although Tedros acknowledged today that these problems were finally less than expected.

“We feared violent reactions towards the most affected communities that did not materialize in general terms and we are grateful for that,” he declared.

In the past three weeks, just 200 cases have been reported worldwide, a 34 percent drop from the previous 21 days.

In the ten months of the outbreak, America ended up being the region that reported the most infections, with more than 59,000 cases, followed by Europe (25,000) and Africa (1,500), the latter continent where there have already been outbreaks of the disease in the past four decades.

By country, the ones that confirmed the most cases were the United States (30,154), Brazil (10,940), Spain (7,551), France (4,146), Colombia (4,090), Mexico (4,010) and Peru (3,800).