WHO maintains public health emergency alert for mpox

(Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday said mpox remained a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), its highest level of alert, citing continued transmission in some countries.

Mpox – which spreads via close contact and tends to cause flu-like symptoms and pus-filled skin lesions – was declared a global health emergency by the WHO in July 2022. The organisation maintained its alert in November.

While the mpox outbreak is effectively over in most of the countries where it began spreading, it continues to be a threat in the parts of west and central Africa where it is endemic, sources close to a meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee said before it began.

The committee said there was continued sustained illness in some countries and likely under-reported detection and confirmed cases in others. Numbers of reported cases had declined since its last meeting.

“The WHO Director-General … concurs with this advice that the event continues to constitute a PHEIC,” it said.

(This story has been corrected to fix attribution to sources close to meeting in paragraph 3)

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru; editing by John Stonestreet)