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Total MPOX cases from 01/01/2022, as of 31/03/2024. Source: WHO (2024)
Date: 15/08/2024
Who’s involved?
The African center for disease control and prevention, World Health Organisation, the Democratic Republic of Congo, pharmaceutical companies and Western governments.
What happened?
On 13/08/2024, the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared a public health emergency on the African continent pertaining to a new strain of MPOX that has been found to spread fast in certain parts of West Africa and is targeting women and children.
On 14/08/2024, the World Health Organization called the MPOX outbreak a global health emergency making it easier for countries and emergency services to obtain adequate amounts of vaccines and reduce paperwork to effectively control the outbreak.
In 2022, the WHO also called another outbreak of MPOX a global health emergency but this referred to another strain of the virus which was transmitted through sexual contact. The newer strain seems to spread easier and affects also women and children whereas the former strain was more prevalent among men as it was spread mostly in the gay community through sexual encounters. This 2022 strain of MPOX spread across the world and there were numerous cases in the United States, Germany, France, Denmark and other countries.
MPOX is a version of smallpox and can cause fever, very painful lesions, chills and body aches. Lesions are usually seen across the face, hands and chest but the new strain shows less obvious lesions and mostly in the genital area. People, mainly children, can die from MPOX.
The new outbreak seems to center on the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and has been responsible for dozens of deaths of children in crowded and unsanitary refugee camps. The East of the DRC has been an unstable region for decades and the government has little to no control over the region which is rich in minerals and is fought over by dozens of terrorist and guerilla groups. The mineral mining in the area is supported by foreign governments and organizations that profit from extracting the minerals and are willing to pay armed groups to protect their interests from being seized by the government.
Vaccines are readily available for Western countries and outbreaks are easily managed which reduces the mortality rate severely. In West-Africa however vaccines are not readily available and pharmaceutical companies and Western governments seem reluctant to provide vaccines. The WHO declaration of a global health emergency has been issued to tackle this problem by circumventing bureaucracy and red tape, but it is not a guarantee that enough vaccines will be available.
It is hard for NGOs to get correct numbers and information on the MPOX outbreak in DRC as the outbreaks occur in contested and dangerous areas where there is no government oversight and armed groups control the flow of people and products.
Analysis:
With the new strain of MPOX spreading fast throughout the DRC and other countries it is likely that hundreds of people will be infected in the coming weeks and months. The number of deaths will rise exponentially and without a well regulated vaccination programme there is the chance the virus will spread to other countries in the region. Countries bordering the DRC like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South-Sudan house large numbers of refugees and displaced people in camps that are not very sanitary. MPOX can easily spread through these camps and it could force people to leave these camps out of fear for their children’s lives. Such an event will spread the virus to places it has not been before, like the refugee camps in Sudan, and it can quickly turn into a very large health emergency.
The past has shown that the outbreak of a disease in poor regions of the world can wreak havoc amongst the population, especially when they live in refugee or displacement camps that are not very hygienic. Armed groups and terrorist organizations can take advantage of this situation by getting their hands on vaccines and being the ones that distribute them in regions under their control. This will likely make people feel more favorable towards these groups as their resentment towards their own government or the West grows. A large outbreak across the African continent can destabilize entire regions that are already on the brink of falling over. This effect can become exponentially worse if the virus spreads to the West and other rich countries and vaccines for Africa will be even less in supply. Resentment over the unbalanced distribution of the COVID vaccines can be fertile ground for extremism. If groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda, or countries like Russia, jump in the gap and help distribute vaccines it is likely that alliances in these regions will shift.
The handing out of vaccines is imperative and will likely help stop the virus from spreading. The willingness of Western countries and pharmaceutical companies to distribute the vaccines free of charge to poorer countries and regions will be the main driving force behind stopping the spread or by letting it run its course.
During the COVID pandemic in the early 2020’s the lack of availability of vaccines for poor countries across the globe was the main factor in the rise of the number of deaths in these countries. This also made the pandemic last longer than necessary. It has long been a contentious point on the global scale that Western countries and pharmaceutical companies tend to keep vaccines for themselves. There is an overproduction and storage of vaccines in the West that at certain times needs to be disposed of because the vaccines have passed their expiration date. During the COVID pandemic in 2022 several pharmaceutical companies pledged to open factories and laboratories in Africa to serve the vaccine market there. But recently most companies have retracted their investments stating that it is not economically viable. Western companies cannot compete with countries like India that produce generic vaccines.
Another problem the pharmaceutical companies have come across was that qualified people who could work in their laboratories usually leave Africa to find work in Europe or the United States. High salaries and a higher standard of living makes moving more attractive.
Conclusion
With the WHO and the African CDC declaring a global health emergency on the outbreak of MPOX in West-Africa there is still a chance that the spread of the disease can be halted if enough vaccines are distributed in these regions. However, it seems that the West and pharmaceutical companies are again reluctant, as they were during the COVID pandemic, to produce more vaccines and supply them to NGOs and emergency health organizations. This reluctancy can lead to a wider spread of the virus and will be responsible for the deaths of dozens of people, mostly children. MPOX is a treatable virus but the new strain is harder to recognize if not looked at by medical professionals. It is therefore likely that the virus will infect more people as they do not know that they are infected by MPOX. This does not help with curbing the spread of the virus. The African CDC and the WHO are likely to lobby for more grants and vaccines to be made available to tackle the outbreak before it becomes a true global problem as COVID turned out to be.
