By Prior Beharry
MONKEYPOX has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The last time this was done was for Covid-19 and one is also in effect for polio.
This is the highest classification of alerts that WHO can issue and follows a surge in cases.
There have been 16,000 monkeypox cases reported in 75 countries and WHO’s director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there have been five deaths due to the outbreak.
The announcement came after a second meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee on the virus on Saturday.
Dr Tedros said, “The WHO’s assessment is that the risk of monkeypox is moderate globally and in all regions, except in the European region, where we assess the risk as high.”
He said there was also a clear risk of further international spread, although the risk of interference with international traffic remained low for the moment.
This declaration could help speed up the development of vaccines.
