The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said this Friday (16) that the confirmation of a case of the new mpox variant 1b in Sweden reinforces the need for all countries affected by the disease to fight the virus together.
“We encourage all countries to scale up surveillance, share data and work to better understand transmission; to share tools such as vaccines; and to apply lessons learned from previous public health emergencies of international concern,” Tedros wrote on his X social media profile.
Understand
The case of the new 1b variant in Sweden was confirmed on Thursday (15), a day after the WHO declared the mpox scenario in Africa a public health emergency of international concern – the entity’s highest level of alert.
The detection of the variant in Sweden is the first outside the African continent. Swedish health authorities reported that the patient was infected while traveling through Africa and is undergoing treatment.
