Africa continued to see a surge in new mpox infections last week, amid several worrying developments in the region, including infections in new countries and outbreaks in crowded settings, including prisons and refugee camps. The number of deaths exceeded 1,000 per year, exceeding a severe standard.
In today’s weekly briefing with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Executive Director Gene Kaseya, MD, MPH, reiterated that the outbreak is not under control. “We still think cross-border transmission is a big problem,” he said, adding that rapid testing is needed to more quickly identify travel-related outbreaks.
Countries in the region reported 3,051 new cases and 50 additional deaths over the past week, bringing the year-to-date total to 42,438 cases, including 1,100 deaths. Kenya this week reported its first death in the outbreak, a 46-year-old man who worked as a truck driver. Zambia’s first case, announced on October 8, also involved a truck driver from Tanzania.
Eighteen countries in the region are now reporting mpox cases, with Zimbabwe reporting its first two cases earlier this week.
In another new development, Ghana, a recently affected country, has reported a second case, a household contact of the first case.
Spread in prisons and refugee camps
Kaseya said new outbreaks have been confirmed in two prisons in Uganda, including patients with no history of travel outside Uganda. To date, three cases have been confirmed at two different prisons, with 1,874 contacts identified.
Health officials initially thought the patients had chickenpox because a facility had reported an outbreak of chickenpox in June.
Meanwhile, the number of infected people continues to rise in internally displaced persons camps in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where 2.5 million people are housed in 13 camps. So far, 697 cases of mpox have been reported from the camp, of which 333 have been laboratory-confirmed. More than half are men, and adults between the ages of 20 and 40 are most affected.
He said that apart from the crowded conditions in both settings, prisons and camps present other challenges to stopping the spread of MPOX, such as a lack of sanitation facilities and lack of access to infection prevention and control tools. said.
Vaccine rollout continues, starting in Nigeria next
Kaseya said vaccinations have so far begun in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Nigeria is scheduled to launch the campaign on October 22nd.
In the DRC, nearly 21,000 people in three provinces (South Kivu, North Kivu and Tshopou) have been vaccinated so far, including contacts of mpox patients and frontline health workers. are. Cases have started to rise in Kinshasa after schools reopened, and vaccinations are expected to begin in November, Kaseya said.
He said only four countries had vaccination plans across the wider region, a step that would pave the way for countries to receive vaccinations. These include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, and the Central African Republic. South Africa has a draft vaccination plan, while Ivory Coast’s plan is in the development stage.