(OPINION) Should we be alarmed? Many of us have been watching the spread of a deadly new strain of Monkeypox for quite some time, and now it appears that this crisis is about to reach a boiling point.
It is being reported that the World Health Organization is going to hold an “emergency meeting” to determine whether or not to declare a “public health emergency of international concern” due to a rapidly growing outbreak of Monkeypox in central Africa.
For those that are not familiar, a “public health emergency of international concern” is the highest level of alert that the WHO issues. For example, in January 2020 a “public health emergency of international concern” was declared when COVID started to spread like wildfire inside China. So could we now be on the verge of the next great global health scare?
Two years ago, an outbreak of Monkeypox quickly spread all over the planet, and it is truly a horrifying disease…
Mpox is a viral disease that causes painful rashes and flu-like symptoms such as fever, headaches and body aches. The virus that causes it comes from the same family as that of smallpox. It spreads from person to person and from animals to people through direct contact.
In May, scientists reported a new strain of the virus in the DRC that they said was more virulent and might spread more easily. Right now, if you somehow got infected with the strain that spread throughout the world in 2022, there is a good chance that you would be in so much pain that you would actually believe that you were about to die.
But that strain was rarely fatal. Unfortunately, this strain is much more deadly.
According to the head of the World Health Organization, this new strain has already killed more than 500 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo so far this year…
The outbreak, which began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but has spread recently to at least three other neighboring countries, has involved more than 14,000 reported cases so far this year alone, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, with at least 511 deaths reported.
Some experts believe that this new strain also spreads more easily. Like the strain that spread all over the globe in 2022, this new strain spreads through sexual contact, but apparently it also spreads in other ways as well…
The CDC said in the alert that outbreaks in some provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been associated with sexual contact.
In other parts of the country, however, patients have gotten sick through contact with infected animals, household transmission or patient care, the CDC said, adding that a high proportion of cases have been reported in children younger than 15.
“Most reported cases in known endemic provinces continue to be among children under 15 years of age,” the World Health Organization wrote on its website on June 14. “Infants and children under five years of age are at highest risk of severe disease and death.”
In 2022, very few children got infected. But this time around lots of children are getting infected. There had been hope that this outbreak could be confined to the Democratic Republic of Congo, but that didn’t happen.
At this point, confirmed cases have been detected in four nations that directly border the Democratic Republic of Congo… The WHO said the virus has now ‘spread to previously unaffected provinces.’
In the past month, at least 50 Mpox cases have been reported in four other countries bordering the DRC – countries that have not experienced the virus before.
They include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. The genie is out of the bottle. What are they going to do now?
Well, it appears that the first step will be to declare a “public health emergency of international concern”…
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday called an “emergency” meeting of international experts amidst growing worries over the mpox virus.
With mpox spreading outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tedros said the WHO emergency committee would meet “as soon as possible” to advise him on “whether the outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern.”
When a “public health emergency of international concern” is officially declared, it will get a ton of media attention and that will really ramp up the fear level. (READ MORE)
