The World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday declared the monkeypox outbreak, which has affected nearly 16,000 people in 72 countries, to be a global emergency.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision to issue the declaration despite a lack of consensus among members of WHO’s emergency committee.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in the international health regulations,” Tedros said. “I know this has not been an easy or straightforward process and that there are divergent views among the members.”
Declaring monkeypox to be a global health emergency means that it has the same distinction as the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio.
The emergency declaration mostly serves as a plea to draw more global resources and attention to an outbreak since the U.N. health agency is largely powerless in getting countries to act.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 72 countries since about May, with deaths only being reported in Africa so far.
The declaration comes weeks after the U.S. reported its first case of monkeypox in Iowa. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, the person likely contracted the disease while traveling abroad.
Monkeypox symptoms appear one to two weeks after infection and initially include mostly flu-like symptoms such as fever, headaches, and shortness of breath. The WHO assured that the virus could be fatal for up to one-in-ten people only, and patients usually recover within two to four weeks without needing to be hospitalized.
Health experts said the virus may have been spreading out of Africa undetected for years under the guise of sexually transmitted diseases.
“What’s likely happened is an endemic infectious disease from Africa found its way into a social and sexual network and then was greatly aided by major amplification events, like raves in Belgium, to disseminate around the world,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja.
95 percent of cases have been transmitted through sexual activity, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Some have speculated that monkeypox might be on the verge of becoming an entrenched sexually transmitted disease in the U.S.
“There are some genetic mutations in the virus that suggest why that may be happening, but we do need a globally-coordinated response to get it under control,” said Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of public health and epidemiology at Yale University.
