WHO Declares Monkeypox Status as Global Emergency
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As of June 22, there were 3308 confirmed cases of monkeypox in 42 countries. This makes the WHN feel the need to take definite steps by establishing the status of monkeypox.
"There is no justification for waiting the monkeypox pandemic to progress further," said World Health Network co-founder Yaneer Bar-Yam, PhD, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute.
"By taking immediate action, we can control the outbreak with minimal effort, and prevent the consequences from getting worse." Bar-Yam said.
“The action needed now requires only clear public communication of symptoms, widely available testing and contact tracing with very little quarantine. Any delay only makes the effort more difficult and the consequences more severe," Bar-Yam added.
The WHN announcement on June 22 coincided before the WHO meeting scheduled to determine the status of the Monkeypox outbreak.
Impact of WHO Monkeypox Status
David Fidler, a senior fellow in global health at the Council on Foreign Relations said the WHO's renewed attention to Monkeypox amid its spread beyond Africa could inadvertently exacerbate the gap between rich and poor countries seen during COVID-19.
"There may be valid reasons why the WHO only sounds the alarm when monkeypox spreads to rich countries, but to poor countries, it looks like a double standard," Fidler said.
The expert said the global community was struggling to ensure the world's poor were vaccinated against the coronavirus and it was unclear whether Africans even wanted a monkeypox vaccine, given competing priorities such as malaria and HIV.
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