The spread of mpox in Africa needs to be addressed urgently, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, as scientists warned separately of a dangerous strain in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“There is a critical need to address the recent surge in mpox cases in Africa,” Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s technical lead for mpox, said in a briefing note to journalists.
In a separate briefing, John Claude Udahemuka of the University of Rwanda, who has been working on an outbreak in Congo’s hard-to-reach South Kivu province, said the strain spreading there – a mutated version of the clade I mpox endemic in Congo for decades – was extremely dangerous. It has fatality rates of around 5% in adults and 10% in children.
Although that has ended, Lewis said on Tuesday the disease remained a health threat. Two people died in South Africa this month of this form of the virus after a handful of cases were diagnosed.
Vaccines and treatments were used to combat the global outbreak, but they are not available in Congo.
The WHO and scientists said efforts were ongoing to address that.
In South Kivu, Adahemuka and other researchers said the new strain was spreading partly by sexual contact among men and women, and particularly among sex workers.
He said other close contact routes needed study, with evidence of transmission at school and from caregiver to child. The disease also seemed to be causing miscarriages among pregnant women as well as a longer-term rash and other lingering symptoms, the team said.
