Africa CDC urges Western countries to boost funding for mpox response
Al Jazeera
Health agency reports 107 deaths and 3,160 new cases over the last week, says toll ‘not acceptable’.
The head of the African Union’s health agency has called on Western countries to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and not abandon Africa amid an ongoing mpox outbreak.
Dr Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said on Thursday that 107 new deaths and 3,160 new cases had been recorded in the past week, just a week after his agency and the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a continental response plan.
“In one week, we lost 107 [people]. It’s too much. It’s not acceptable,” he said as he emphasised the need for stronger cross-border surveillance.
Mpox was declared an international emergency in August by the WHO, concerned by a surge in cases of the new clade 1b strain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the epicentre of the outbreak.
The Africa CDC has said it is short of a $600m target to tackle the disease now present in 14 nations on the continent.
