More than 190,000 mpox cases and nearly 2,000 deaths have been reported in Africa since early 2024, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said late Thursday.
Speaking at an online briefing, Yap Boum II, deputy incident manager for mpox at Africa CDC, said 29 affected countries had recorded 191,559 cases since January 2024, including 53,013 confirmed and 1,999 deaths. He noted that the outbreak was easing, with confirmed and suspected cases declining in recent weeks after peaking in May.
Weekly confirmed infections have dropped 70 percent, from 1,620 in May to 491 last week, thanks to wider testing, according to Africa CDC.
At the same time, the African Union health body called for stronger community surveillance in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to help contain the latest Ebola outbreak.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that at least 31 people had died in the outbreak in DRC’s central Kasai province, where 48 cases – 38 confirmed – have been reported. Fifteen patients remain in treatment at an Ebola centre in Bulape, the epicentre of the outbreak, while two have recovered.
Boum stressed the need to identify suspected cases quickly and transfer them to treatment centres for isolation and care, calling the recovery of two Ebola patients “very positive and encouraging news”.
Ebola is a highly contagious haemorrhagic fever causing fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, body pain, fatigue and, in many cases, internal and external bleeding, according to the WHO.
