Africa’s mpox outbreaks due to decades of neglect, experts say

Mpox had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Nigeria and elsewhere before the disease prompted the 2022 outbreak in more than 70 countries.

The rising mpox outbreaks in Africa that triggered the World Health Organization’s emergency declaration are largely the result of decades of neglect and the global community’s inability to stop sporadic epidemics among a population with little immunity against the smallpox-related disease, leading African scientists said Tuesday.

According to Dr. Dimie Ogoina, who chaired WHO’s mpox emergency committee, negligence had led to a new, more transmissible version of the virus emerging in countries with few resources to stop outbreaks.

Mpox, also known as monkeypox, had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Nigeria and elsewhere before the disease prompted the 2022 outbreak in more than 70 countries, Ogoina said at a virtual news conference.

“What we are witnessing in Africa now is different from the global outbreak in 2022,” he said. While that outbreak was overwhelmingly focused in gay and bisexual men, mpox in Africa is now being spread via sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups.

And while most people over 50 were likely vaccinated against smallpox — which may provide some protection against mpox — that is not the case for Africa’s mostly young population, who Ogoina said were mostly susceptible.

Mpox belongs to the same family of viruses as smallpox but causes milder symptoms like fever, chills and body aches. It mostly spreads through close skin-to-skin contact, including sex. People with more serious cases can develop prominent blisters on the face, hands, chest and genitals.

Earlier this month, WHO declared the surging mpox outbreaks in Congo and 11 other countries in Africa to be a global emergency. Out of a total of 18,910 cases in 2024, 94 per cent— or 17,794 — were in Congo, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, with 535 of the 541 deaths reported last week. Nearly 70 per cent of mpox infections in Congo are in children under 15.

Dr. Placide Mbala-Kingebeni, a Congolese scientist who helped identify the newest version of mpox, said diagnostic tests being used in the country did not always pick it up, making it hard to track the variant’s spread.