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| Topic - New emerging Monkeypox strain in Congo Posted: 26 Jun 2024 at 11:30am By Albert |
WHO urges swift response as DRC hit by mutated mpox strainThe spread of mpox in Africa needs to be addressed urgently, the World Health Organization has warned, as more deaths were reported from a mutated strain of the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo KEY FACTS
In separate briefings Tuesday, global health experts and WHO officials warned a dangerous new strain of mpox was driving an outbreak in the DRC, with cases spread through sexual contact as well as non-sexual contact like touch, which makes it more dangerous and easier to spread. Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a viral infection rarely seen outside some regions of Africa until it spread across Europe and America in 2022 in an outbreak that was largely driven by sexual contact among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, a then-unreported method of transmission. There are two types of virus that can cause mpox infections—genetically distinguished in groups called clades—which can cause symptoms like fever, chills, fatigue and a characteristic pus filled rash. It was an offshoot of the milder clade II (two) virus, clade IIb, that was responsible for the global wave of cases in 2022 and 2023. This outbreak is being driven by a mutated form of clade I mpox, clade Ib, that first emerged among sex workers in a DRC mining town in September, a development experts told Forbes was unusual as the virus was only rarely transmitted between people and was typically associated with spillover contact with animals through things like bushmeat. Experts said the variant spreading in the DRC has a death rate of around 5% in adults and 10% in children and has caused an alarming number of miscarriages among infected pregnant people and John Claude Udahemuka, a lecturer at the University of Rwanda described it as “undoubtedly the most dangerous of all the known strains of mpox, considering how it is transmitted, how it is spread” and symptoms. Trudie Lang, professor of global health and director of the Global Health Network at Oxford University, told Forbes there is “very much” a risk the virus could spread globally in the manner of the 2022 outbreak, stressing it is a “priority” to do research “to establish whether the vaccines and treatments will work.” |
