EBN- The World Health Organization has launched a six-month plan to help stop the spread of monkeypox, an epidemic that could have been avoided in Africa, by taking into account previous warnings, by providing more vaccines, according to a report by the American Bloomberg Agency, citing scientists and public health officials.
A 6-month plan
The World Health Organization launched a 6-month plan on Monday to help stop the outbreak of monkeypox, which includes increasing the number of staff in affected countries and strengthening surveillance and prevention strategies.
The organization said it expects the plan, which will run from September to February next year, to require $135 million in funding, and aims to improve equitable access to vaccines, especially in African countries most affected by the outbreak.
“The monkeypox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighbouring countries can be controlled and stopped,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement, adding that the organisation had “surged its staff in affected countries.
For its part, a report by the American Bloomberg Agency, quoting scientists and public health officials, revealed that “the outbreak of monkeypox in Africa could have been avoided if previous warnings had been taken into account and more vaccines had been provided,” before the concern reached the rest of the world and prompted the World Health Organization to declare a state of emergency.
According to Bloomberg, “missteps” and “inaction” on the part of governments, health agencies, and scientific research funders have created “the ideal environment for the virus to mutate into a strain that spreads more easily among humans.”
Although an effective vaccine is available — costing about $100 — and countries like the United States have stockpiled millions of doses, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the virus has spread, has not yet received any, the agency said.
Critics blame the World Health Organization, which delayed licensing vaccines, preventing treatment from reaching countries in need as quickly as possible. Now, instead of a localized outbreak, scientists, aid groups and government authorities are warning that the virus “could spread more widely outside Africa,” Bloomberg reports.
World health emergency
In the two years since the latest outbreak, “not a single cent of donor money has been invested globally to control monkeypox,” the World Health Organization said. Until recently, there was a window of opportunity to act to contain the virus, said Lawrence Lissenburgs, an infectious disease physician working in the Congo. He and his colleagues discovered the mutation in January. “What we saw really surprised me,” Lissenburgs told Bloomberg. “It was a completely different outbreak.”
He considered that “if vaccinations, testing and monitoring had been widely implemented, the recent health emergency declared by the World Health Organization on August 14 could have been avoided.”
“We didn’t have money to address transmission mechanisms or any other issues for two decades,” said epidemiologist Anne Rimoin, who has been working in Congo for 22 years to understand how the virus spreads.
Asked who was responsible, Rimoin, who is chair of the division of infectious diseases and public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, said: “I don’t think it’s about finger-pointing, it’s about a lack of resources globally to combat emerging diseases.”
Since the beginning of 2024, the virus has killed about 575 people in the Republic of the Congo and infected more than 20,000, according to the latest data from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
