More: Australian officials are warning that the monkey pox virus could migrate to Australia via Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean. The isolated island is home for migratory seabirds due to return there in the southern spring. H5N1 was confirmed in wester Antarctica in February. It killed an estimated 30,000 sea lions. The environment minister expressed concern that the virus could have devastating impact on endangered species. Australia has some 2,,224 listed as endangered species. Currently Australia is the only continent in the world unaffected by the virus
{8.13.2024}The African Center for Disease Control has announced its first health emergency as a strain of the monkey pox virus--a less virulent form of the smallpox virus--has spread rapidly across Central Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency over the weekend. At least 120 confirmed case have been detected outside of Africa where it does not usually occur. Scientists are worried that mpox, the disease caused by the virus, could reach epidemic proportions soon since it is appearing in densely populated areas. Bukavu, a city of one million in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has seen a surge of cases.
Evidence indicates that the current strain is more virulent than the one (Clad II) that started the global mpox outbreak in 2022 that has infected more than 95,000 people and killed 180. Clad I has caused small outbreaks in rural Central Africa for decades, but has been identified in the current outbreak in South Kivu. It is spread through contact, including sexual activity. Children are particularly vulnerable to the disease; two-thirds of the infections in DRC are in children under 15 African countries have already reported more mpox cases in 2024 than in all of 2023--17,500 compared to 15,000. Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Rawanda have all reported their first ever mpox infections [photo credit: WHO]
Mpox, like the related disease smallpox, creates painful, fluid-filled skin lesions, and in severe cases cause death. Treatments and vaccine for mpox that exist in affluent countries are almost non-existent in Africa. Africa CDC is in negotiations with Bavarian Nordic, a company that produces a mpox vaccine, for 200,000 doses, but an estimated 10 million are needed to stop the disease's spread. The effectiveness of the vaccine agains Clad I is not clear, but something is better than nothing given the dire circumstances in Central Africa. Epidemiologists hope that the WHO declaration of a global emergency will not lead to stockpiling by wealth countries, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.