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More than 800 people have died from mpox across Africa, the African Union Center for Disease Control said Thursday, warning that the outbreak was “not under control.”
The AU Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said some 34,297 cases have been recorded across the continent since January, including 38 cases in Ghana. He added that
This brings the number of African countries where mpox has been officially detected this year to 16, according to health authorities.
Africa CDC Director Jean Kaseya told a news conference that the death toll since the beginning of the year was 866 and that “the epidemic is not under control.”
He also noted that around 2,500 new cases had been detected in the past week and warned that testing rates remained “too low”.
Kaseya added that vaccinations would begin within two days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the epicenter of the outbreak. Vaccination was scheduled to begin on October 2nd.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus that is transmitted from infected animals to humans, but can also be transmitted from human to human through close physical contact.
It causes fever, muscle pain, large boil-like skin lesions, and can be fatal.
jcp-rbu/yad
