With 3,417 confirmed Monkeypox cases reported across 58 countries, World Health Network (WHN) has announced that they are declaring the current monkeypox outbreak a pandemic.
The WHN announcement came ahead of the WHO meeting that was held on 23 June. It was to decide on their monkeypox outbreak designation. Even with death rates much lower than smallpox, unless actions are taken to stop the ongoing spread—actions that can be practically implemented—millions of people will die and many more will become blind and disabled, it said.
The outbreak is rapidly expanding across multiple continents and will not stop without concerted global action, it said in a statement.
It added- Even with death rates much lower than smallpox; unless actions are taken to stop the ongoing spread actions that can be practically implemented millions of people will die and many more will become blind and disabled.
WHN said that the essential purpose of declaring Monkeypox a pandemic is to achieve a concerted effort across multiple countries or over the world to prevent widespread harm.
What does WHN have to say about Monkeypox?
“There is no justification to wait for the monkeypox pandemic to grow further. The best time to act is now. By taking immediate action, we can control the outbreak with the least effort, and prevent consequences from becoming worse. The actions needed now only require clear public communication about symptoms, widely available testing, and contact tracing with very few quarantines. Any delay only makes the effort harder and the consequences more severe”, said Yaneer Bar-Yam, PhD, President of New England Complex System Institute and co-founder of WHN.
“The WHO needs to urgently declare its own Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC); the lessons of not declaring a PHEIC immediately in early January 2020 should be remembered as a history lesson of what acting late on an epidemic can mean for the world,” said Eric Feigl-Ding, Ph.D., Epidemiologist and Health Economist, and co-founder of WHN.