Geneva, Jul 21 (EFE).- An emergency committee made up of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) is holding a closed-door meeting today to discuss whether to declare an international emergency due to the monkeypox outbreak, with some 14,000 cases already declared in more than 70 countries in the last four months.
It is the second time that this committee has met after estimating this international emergency in June, although given the increase in cases in different regions of the planet, it has been decided to analyze this option again, which would increase the alert levels of national health networks. .
“I remain concerned about the high number of cases, in an increasing number of countries,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the opening of the committee, who indicated that although in some countries a decrease in infections, the trend is not yet general.
Tedros added that for now most of the cases have occurred among men who have sex with other men, and warned about the stigmatization that the group could suffer due to this circumstance.
He also indicated that there is not enough information on cases in East and Central Africa, where the disease has been endemic for decades, although in the current outbreak a large part of the infections have been detected in Europe.
An international emergency can be declared when a contagious disease spreads uncontrollably in many countries, requiring governments to adopt special preventive measures to stop its spread.
In 2020, the WHO declared such an emergency, still in force, due to covid, and has also issued this measure in recent years for several Ebola outbreaks. EFE
