||| FROM THE WASHINGTON POST |||
“In short, we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Saturday.
The decision means the world is now confronting two viral diseases that have crossed the extraordinary threshold of being declared health emergencies: covid-19 and monkeypox. The WHO labeled the coronavirus pandemic a global crisis early in 2020.
WHO officials said the global risk of monkeypox is moderate, but that it is high in Europe, where most of the infections have been recorded in an outbreak that ignited in the spring.
Tedros said that one of the reasons he moved to declare a global health emergency is the potential for stanching the outbreak, which is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men.
“That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups,” Tedros said.
The WHO director general emphasized that any containment measures should respect the “human rights and dignity” of gay and bisexual men.
“Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus,” Tedros said.
WHO officials also said higher rates of “health-seeking behavior” among gay and bisexual men and a culture of public health in the community shaped by the AIDS crisis can help end the outbreak.
The global health agency’s announcement was accompanied by recommendations to bolster a coordinated global monkeypox response designed to intensify surveillance, accelerate research into vaccines and therapeutics, and strengthen infection control in hospitals.
The recommendations call on people to avoid travel if they are experiencing monkeypox symptoms or are under health monitoring because of an exposure to someone who is infected.
The emergency declaration came after a second meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee, which declined to take the step a month ago.
The committee remained divided Saturday on whether the outbreak constituted an emergency, with nine members opposed to such a declaration and six in favor, Tedros said. But the director general took the unusual step of not heeding the advice of the committee and declaring an emergency, anyway.
