Monkey pox: WHO triggers its highest level of alert
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the risk worldwide was relatively moderate.
AP - Salvatore Di Nolfi
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
The boss of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus decided this Saturday, July 23 to declare a "public health emergency of international concern" in the face of the outbreak of monkey pox cases.
Advertising
Read more
Two days after a meeting of the Emergency Committee, the director general of the WHO finally decided to trigger the highest level of alert from the health agency, supposed to lead to a whole series of actions by its member countries.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus nevertheless clarified during a press briefing that the risk of transmission of monkeypox in the world was relatively moderate apart from Europe where it is high.
On Friday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it had approved the use of a human smallpox vaccine to expand its use against the spread of monkeypox.
This vaccine is in fact already used for this purpose in several countries, including France.
The Imvanex vaccine, from Danish company Bavarian Nordic, has been approved in the EU since 2013 for the prevention of smallpox.
The WHO recommends vaccinating those most at risk as well as health workers likely to be confronted with the disease.
In New York, thousands of people have already been vaccinated with the Jynneos vaccine.
Detected in early May, the unusual upsurge in monkeypox cases outside central and west African countries where the virus is endemic has since spread across the globe, with Europe as its epicenter.
To date, it has reached nearly 17,000 people in 74 countries.
First detected in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than its cousin smallpox, eradicated in 1980.
In most cases, the patients are men who have sex with men, relatively young, and living mainly in cities, according to the WHO.
A study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the largest on the subject and based on data from 16 different countries, confirms that the vast majority – 95% – of recent cases were transmitted during a sexual contact and that 98% of those affected were gay or bisexual men.
(
With
AFP)
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_EN
Health and medicine
WHO