WHO calls emergency committee over mpox

GENEVA — The head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that an emergency committee will be convened to discuss whether the current mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo represents an international public health emergency.

The current mpox outbreak in DR Congo has already seen about 27,000 cases, and claimed more than 1,100 lives, most of them children, since the beginning of 2023.

The WHO said that 50 more mpox cases had been confirmed and more were suspected in four countries — Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda — where cases have previously not been reported.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that he had decided to convene an emergency committee in light of the spread of mpox in neighboring countries and the potential for spreading further within and outside Africa.

An emergency committee is made up of international experts who provide technical advice and recommendations to the WHO chief about whether a disease outbreak is a "public health emergency of international concern" — the agency's highest level of alert. The final decision is made by the director-general.

'As soon as possible'

The UN-affiliated WHO said the emergency committee will be pulled together "as soon as possible" but did not provide a definitive date for the meeting or any other details.

"We have released $1 million from the WHO contingency fund for emergencies to support scale-up of the response and we plan to release more in the coming days," Tedros said on a call with journalists.

The outbreak began with the spread of an endemic strain, known as Clade I. But the new variant, known as Clade Ib, appears to spread more easily through routine close contact, as seems to be the case among children.

Presence of the Clade Ib strain had been confirmed in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, Tedros said, while the strain in Burundi was still being analyzed.

Agencies via Xinhua