GENEVA: The head of the World Health Organization on Saturday declared monkeypox a global health emergency following a surge in cases.
The classification is the highest alert that the UN agency can issue. More than 16,000 cases have now been reported from 75 countries, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
There are only two other such health emergencies at present — the coronavirus pandemic and the continuing effort to eradicate polio.
Tedros acknowledged that experts engaged by the WHO in June were unable to reach a consensus on whether monkeypox constitutes a global emergency, but the agency is going ahead with the declaration.
The new alert signals that a coordinated international response is needed and could unlock funding and global efforts to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments.
A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.
Thailand this week reported its first known case of monkeypox, in a Nigerian man in Phuket. He was examined at a hospital with mild symptoms and advised to quarantine at his condominium, but he has then left the island. He was arrested on Saturday afternoon in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
On June 23, the WHO convened an emergency committee of experts to decide if monkeypox constitutes a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) — the agency’s highest alert level.
But a majority advised Tedros that the situation, at that point, had not met the threshold.
At a second meeting on Thursday, with case numbers rising further, Tedros said he was worried.
“I need your advice in assessing the immediate and mid-term public health implications,” he told the meeting, which lasted more than six hours.
A US health expert sounded a grim warning late Friday.
“Since the last #monkeypox EC just weeks ago we’ve seen an exponential rise in cases. It’s inevitable that cases will dramatically rise in the coming weeks & months. That’s why @DrTedros must sound the global alarm,” Lawrence Gostin, the director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, said on Twitter.
“A failure to act will have grave consequences for global health.”
Warning against discrimination
A viral infection resembling smallpox and first detected in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980.
Ninety-five percent of cases have been transmitted through sexual activity, according to a study of 528 people in 16 countries published in the New England Journal of Medicine — the largest research to date.
Overall, 98% of infected people were gay or bisexual men, and around a third were known to have visited sex-on-site venues such as sex parties or saunas within the previous month.
“This transmission pattern represents both an opportunity to implement targeted public health interventions, and a challenge because in some countries, the communities affected face life-threatening discrimination,” Tedros said, citing concern that stigma and scapegoating could make the outbreak harder to track.
“I am acutely aware that any decision I take regarding the possible determination of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern involves the consideration of many factors, with the ultimate goal of protecting public health,” he added.
The European Union’s drug watchdog on Friday recommended for approval the use of Imnavex, a smallpox vaccine, to treat monkeypox.
Imvanex, developed by the Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, has been approved in the EU since 2013 for the prevention of smallpox.
It was also considered a potential vaccine for monkeypox because of the similarity between the monkeypox virus and the smallpox virus.
The first symptoms of monkeypox are fever, headaches, muscle pain and back pain during the course of five days.
Rashes subsequently appear on the face, the palms of hands and soles of feet, followed by lesions, spots and finally scabs.