“We believe that it needs some coordinated response because of the geographic spread,” said WHO Director-General Ghebreyesu.
QUICK FACTS:
- The World Health Organization (WHO) will summon an emergency committee next week to determine whether monkeypox represents “a public health emergency of international concern.”
- The meeting will take place Thursday, Jun 23, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu announced at a Tuesday media event as he indicated it was time to consider bolstering international coordination in responding to monkeypox.
- “It’s now clear there is an unusual situation, meaning the virus is behaving unusually from how it used to behave in the past,” Ghebreyesu said. “It’s affecting more and more countries, and we believe that it needs some coordinated response because of the geographic spread.”
- “We don’t want to wait until the situation is out of control,” said Ibrahima Socé Fall, the WHO emergencies director for Africa. The organization doesn’t want to wait until the situation is “out of control,” added Fall.
AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION EXPRESSING CONCERN:
- Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said on Tuesday that the fact that the WHO is calling an emergency committee “tells you that the [WHO] director is worried.”
- “When you see something this different, you want to know what you’re missing,” Benjamin said. “You want to lay out a strategy to understand what you don’t know, evaluate what you do know.”
- “Hopefully we think about how we coordinate this across the world, because it’s clearly a worldwide outbreak,” he went on to say.
BACKGROUND:
- In 39 countries, there have been 1,600 confirmed and 1,500 suspected cases of monkeypox this year and 72 deaths, according to the WHO.
- The disease is endemic in Africa, but recently there has been a significant increase in monkeypox cases in that country and others.
- Monkeypox—usually fatal in 3-6% of cases—causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions. The disease spreads through close contact.
- It is the WHO Director-General who ultimately makes the decision whether the outbreak deserves to be characterized as an international public health concern.
- Canada is now implementing a monkeypox quarantine, as the nation’s Public Health Agency raised its Monkeypox alert to “Level 2,” which mandates travelers be subject to potential isolation and quarantine.
