Failure to show solidarity with African countries at the centre of the Mpox epidemic will endanger the world and undermine preparations for future pandemics, leading health experts said.
In view of the increasing number of cases, which are also spreading beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the virus is endemic, the World Health Organization declared an international health emergency on Wednesday.
In Africa, more than 18,700 cases – and over 500 deaths – have been reported so far this year, more than in all of 2023. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has declared a continental health emergency.
Dr Ebere Okereke, Associate Fellow in Chatham House’s Global Health Programme, said: “If we do not respond vigorously to these declarations, the consequences could be severe, potentially leading to increased spread of new and more dangerous variants. The risk of not acting now is not just a risk for Africa, but for the rest of the world.”
Both statements, she said, “provide an opportunity to test the global response to health emergencies in the post-Covid-19 era and demonstrate that lessons have been learned on justice.”
The response to the Covid pandemic has damaged relations between richer and poorer countries, with resources such as vaccines, tests and personal protective equipment taking much longer to reach developing countries than they did to wealthier countries.
Negotiations on a proposed pandemic agreement that would regulate how the world should respond to serious disease outbreaks failed to be concluded within the deadline at this year’s World Health Assembly in Geneva. The key sticking point has been the question of equity – including whether developing countries should be guaranteed access to medicines and treatment in return for their efforts to collect information about pathogens circulating in their territories.
Okereke said the global community’s response to the statements would be “a litmus test for the potential effectiveness of a future pandemic treaty.”
And a disappointing response would raise doubts about the effectiveness of current emergency declaration systems, she said.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said: “MPox has been endemic in some African countries for years, yet although drugs existed to treat it, no serious action was taken until the outbreak posed a threat to the West.
“We have seen this same injustice during the Covid pandemic, when human lives in the global South were shamefully treated as collateral damage in order to extract ever more profits from the pharmaceutical industry. It is therefore inevitable that the global South’s trust in the West has plummeted.”
Dearden said pharmaceutical companies would “continue to obstruct equitable access to vaccines for profit” and called on rich countries, including Britain, to “stand up to the pharmaceutical industry” and support measures in the pandemic treaty negotiations “that would prevent this deep inequality from being repeated again and again”.
The United States announced it would donate 50,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine against Mpox to the Democratic Republic of Congo, but in the longer term, a sustainable supply chain, including production on the continent, is needed, said health experts at the Africa CDC.
