The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that throughout the last week, there were at least 489 new cases and 53 confirmed deaths.
Amidst an increase in new cases, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) declared on Thursday that mpox remains a serious public health concern in Africa.
Jean Kaseya revealed at a press briefing that 4,89 of the 3,186 new cases that were reported in the last week were confirmed, and 53 of these resulted in deaths.
“We see an increase when we compared with previous weeks, but we don’t see a decrease in terms of death,” he stated, emphasizing the need to expedite various treatments, like as vaccination, to halt the spread.
According to the most recent data from the Africa CDC, there have been over 38,300 cases reported in 16 countries across the continent in 2024, along with 979 deaths.
The most recent nations on the continent to report mpox outbreaks are Zambia and Ghana.
worldwide public health emergency
In August, the World Health Organization, responding to the spread of a new strain of the virus from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to neighboring countries, declared mpox a worldwide public health emergency for the second time in two years.
According to Kaseya, the vaccination campaign that was started over the weekend in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the most impacted countries in the area, is on track to vaccinate over 1,600 individuals, mostly in the east.
Africa CDC reports that Nigeria, which has been given a US quota of 10,000 doses of a vaccine, would begin immunization in the near future.
Africa anticipates 10 million doses from collaborators.
Mumps causes pus-filled lesions and flu-like symptoms.
