As the World Health Organization calculates whether to declare monkeypox a global health emergency, infectious disease experts are urging health officials to be more proactive and start stepping up vaccinations and surveillance – especially in African countries, where the virus is most prevalent.
The WHO convened its emergency committee on Thursday to consider whether the monkeypox spiral epidemic should be declared a “public health emergency of international importance”, the highest level of WHO concern.
But the United Nations agency is facing criticism for treating monkeypox – it only took action after the disease began to spread to rich Western countries.
Read more: WHO to discuss declaring monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency
The viral disease, which causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions, is endemic in parts of Africa, meaning it is present in certain regions. The continent has registered just over 1,500 suspicious cases since early 2022, 70 of which were fatal, according to the WHO.
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By comparison, Canada has confirmed more than 200 cases, most of them in Quebec, and there are no deaths.
“There are more cases that happen in Africa on an annual basis than have already been reported outside Africa. And there are more monkeypox deaths in Africa than in the rest of the world, “said Dr. Samir Elsayed, an infectious disease doctor and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University.
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That’s why he believes Africa should get the lion’s share of resources to tackle monkeypox – and that should include mass vaccinations, he said.
“I think Africa should be given high priority,” he said.
“It should be a mass vaccination campaign against monkeypox with newer vaccines for people on the African continent, especially in high-endemic areas.
He is not alone.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a doctor and infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, also says she believes more people living in regions where monkeypox is more common should be vaccinated.
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“This will actually stop it in endemic regions in this non-endemic epidemic.”
The fact that the WHO is only now taking monkeypox seriously is “deeply problematic,” Gandhi said, given that the disease has been spreading and killing people in Central and West Africa for years.
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“It has been circulating since 1958. There are growing outbreaks – severe in Nigeria, for example in 2017 – and the WHO only intervened when it affected high-income countries.”
Experts who have worked on monkeypox in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo have long noted increasing cases, while the population’s immunity to measles viruses is declining due to a lack of vaccination. That’s why the world shouldn’t be surprised by current outbreaks, said Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA in California who has studied monkeypox for two decades.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how quickly a deadly virus can spread around the world when the right conditions are in place, so healthcare professionals need to learn from this and start being more proactive, she said.
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“When it comes to infectious diseases, especially those viruses that have the potential to spread globally, it’s much easier to avoid trouble than to get out of trouble.”
In addition to providing vaccines, health officials also need to increase resources to study the disease and do more monitoring to better understand monkeypox and learn why it is spreading in new and unusual ways, Rimoin said.
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“We have given this virus a lot of a path so that it can spread. We did not look for him as vigilantly as we should have, “she said.
“I think we need to learn the lessons we learned with COVID-19, and it’s much better to invest in advance to deal with these viruses, to do the necessary monitoring to update our knowledge of viruses on a regular basis.”
Good disease surveillance is just as important in poorer countries as it is in “high-resource environments,” she added.
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Like many countries around the world, Canada and the United States stopped vaccinating the general population against smallpox around 1972, which means that many people on the continent are highly susceptible to measles viruses such as monkeypox.
As scientists expect to see more emerging infectious diseases due to factors such as climate change, deforestation and globalization, the world needs to start better preparing for new outbreaks, Elsayed said.
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Therefore, in addition to calling for vaccinations and more resources to combat monkeypox in Africa, Elsayed believes that governments in developed countries should also consider more ways to protect citizens from measles viruses, including the possible reintroduction of mass vaccinations. against smallpox.
“I believe that these vaccines should reappear for the general population… but not (only) for monkeypox, but also to protect the world against perhaps a smallpox pandemic that may occur in the future, or even another a virus that is closely linked to monkeypox but has not reached humans, ”Elsayed said.
He emphasized that this should only be considered once the more pressing needs in Africa have been addressed.
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Rimoin noted that when the world stopped vaccinating against smallpox, it opened a “gap of immunity” for populations to become vulnerable to it again. And with the emergence of a number of new measles viruses in different parts of the globe, including mouse measles, cowpox and camel measles, the world is not immune to new outbreaks, she said.
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“Now we have to really think about how important it is for us to be able to keep measles viruses out of the population?” She said. “What are the stakes to allow this virus to spread?” And then act accordingly. “
-With files from Global News reporter Reggie Cecini and Reuters.
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