Africa has recorded a total of 18,737 suspected or confirmed cases of mpox so far this year, including 1,200 in one week alone, according to the African Union Health Agency on Saturday.
The toll represents all variants of the virus but not exclusively Clade 1b which is more fatal and transmissible and led to the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday as an international health emergency-the highest stage of alertness that can be declared by WHO.
According to a statement from Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been 15,636 suspected mpox cases and 3,101 confirmed ones out of seven AU member states with a fatality rate of 2.89% (541 deaths).
In addition to this, there were also 24 deaths arising from 1005 infections in DRC where Clade 1b was first found during September 2023.
Every single province across the country reports illnesses among its approximately one hundred million residents.
This signifies an increase of 75 percent within a week after Burundi documented eightyfour additional cases- thirty-nine confirmed and one hundred and thirty four-suspected.
A total number of reported cases since the beginning of this year have exceeded all those that were reported last year with only 14,383 such incidents as per Africa CDC records.
The first patient infected outside Africa came down with mpox this week in Sweden and Pakistan.
Its Emergency Committee will soon issue its first advice while NGOs and WHO are also appealing for increased vaccine production capacity.
Mpox is transmitted between animals and humans but can also be transmitted through physical contact such as sex or close body fluids. The disease includes symptoms like fever, muscle pain, painful swellings over large areas around skin.
In contrast to earlier strains localized mainly around the mouth or face areas including sexual parts were noticed while Clade causes eruptions everywhere in the body.
In 1970, the illness discovered in humans for the first time was called monkeypox but it has now changed its name to mpox.
For decades Clade 1 disease has been endemic in the Congo Basin of Central Africa and is far more lethal.
