Last week, the World Health Organization called attention to an mpox outbreak in South Africa. Officials there confirmed 20 cases between May 8 and July 2, with 18 hospitalizations and three deaths.
Another concern is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an outbreak that began last year has been accelerating — and where the variant is dramatically deadlier than the mpox strain of 2022. About 6% of people who get this type of mpox are dying from it — compared to a 0.2% death rate for the 2022 strain. Most of the deaths in the DRC outbreak are among children.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Two outbreaks of mpox in sub-Saharan Africa are raising concerns about the continued spread of the virus globally — and the surge of a deadlier strain than the one that began circling the globe in 2022.
“We live in an interconnected world, so the spread of this virus can continue to happen, and that is something that requires strong surveillance,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the WHO, told reporters on Thursday.
“We are sequencing our cases, and we’re looking out for [the deadly strain] — but at the moment, it’s the global outbreak” variant, Lucille Blumberg, an honorary consultant for the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa, tells NPR.
In DRC, there are similar challenges reaching sex workers who are heavily stigmatized, Jason Kindrachuk, associate professor in medical microbiology and infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba, tells NPR.
South Africa, for example, could tap into established HIV programs where “many people have experience communicating sensitively and working with key population groups,” Blumberg says.
Beyond vaccines, fundamental public health work — communicating the risks, offering testing and treatment, doing contact tracing, and above all mobilizing the community — could also help, Van Kerkhove says.
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