Mozambique: Mpox may become ‘another challenge’ for public health – president

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Mozambique: Mpox may become ‘another challenge’ for public health – president

7:04 CAT | 19 Aug 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi warned on Monday that mpox could become ‘another challenge’ for public health in Mozambique, noting the Ministry of health’s reinforcement of surveillance measures and actions to prevent the disease.

‘Compatriots, this could be another public health challenge,’ declared Mozambique’s head of state, during a public event in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, in a mention of the new strain of mpox.

Filipe Nyusi also pointed out Mozambique’s ability to prevent the disease, recalling that the country recorded only one case in Maputo province, southern Mozambique, during the outbreak in 2022.

Although no cases have been recorded since that year, the President of Mozambique said today that the Ministry of Health (MISAU) has been reinforcing surveillance measures in all hospital units in the country, including strengthening and expanding laboratory capacity for testing suspected cases.

Among the actions, said the President, is also the updating of the ‘preparedness and response plan’, as well as the ‘therapeutic protocols’ and risk communication actions.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the mpox outbreak in Africa a global health emergency, with confirmed cases among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new strain circulating.

The organisation called for a unified international response in the face of the identification of the new strain of the virus in Europe (Sweden), a day after the first case was reported in Asia (Pakistan).

According to the WHO, there are currently half a million of one of the two vaccines that have been developed in rapid processes against mpox, and a further 2.5 million doses could be produced next year.

Formerly known as ‘monkeypox’, mpox is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans, but is also transmitted by close physical contact with a person infected with the virus.

Mpox was first discovered in humans in 1970, in present-day DRCongo (formerly Zaire), with the spread of the clade I subtype (of which the new strain is a mutation), which has since been mainly confined to West and Central African countries, where patients are usually infected by animals.

In 2022, an outbreak of the clade II subtype spread to a hundred countries where the disease was not endemic, affecting mainly homosexual and bisexual men and causing around 140 deaths out of an estimated 90,000 cases.

The WHO declared a high alert in July 2022 in response to this global outbreak, but lifted it less than a year later, in May 2023.

Source: Lusa