By MondAfrique: The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has declared monkeypox, also known as Mpox, a “public health emergency of continental security.” This alert enables the mobilization of resources and better coordination of the response to this outbreak, which originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than 95% of cases are concentrated, but is spreading across the continent beyond the endemic area.
In 2022, “monkeypox” (known as Mpox in English) suddenly appeared on the international scene. Renamed Mpox by the World Health Organization, this disease is caused by a virus belonging to the same family as smallpox (officially declared eradicated in 1979, thanks to vaccination). Like smallpox, it manifests as fever and a skin rash, though it is less severe.
The first human case of Mpox was detected in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in the context of smallpox eradication campaigns. The disease has since been endemic in Central and West Africa.
For a long time relatively unknown or even neglected, Mpox (monkeypox) came into the spotlight following the global spread of the disease in May 2022.
A year and a half later, while the epidemic has subsided in Western countries, the two known strains of the virus responsible for the disease continue to circulate in Africa, and the number of human cases is increasing. What are the consequences and risks at the scale of this continent and beyond?
