The WHO (World Health Organization) decided this Saturday that monkeypox is a global health emergency. The decision was made after an expert assessment, taking into account the spread of the disease and the potential risk of contamination. Scientists urged governments to step up their monitoring actions. For the agency, “collective action” will be required to deal with the new crisis.
Intense debate among scientists resulted in a decision that took weeks to complete. This was the second meeting of the WHO Emergency Committee on the subject. In the first of these, there was no consensus on the international emergency declaration in June. Now, the mechanism split again and there was no consensus. However, despite this, the WHO summit decided to announce the emergency declaration on the grounds that the risks were real.
To date, five emergencies have been declared by the agency in just over a decade, signaling the need for governments worldwide to take measures to monitor the outbreak and control cases.
With more than 16,000 cases and five deaths, the disease began to be tracked by WHO. In Brazil, the Ministry of Health reported that 607 cases were detected.
The declaration of a global emergency aims to increase coordination between countries and strengthen active case finding mechanisms and implement measures to help contain the global circulation of the virus.
The WHO emergency committee meeting was held amid growing concern about the increase in non-endemic areas outside of Africa, particularly in Europe, but also in the Americas, with a few cases also reported in Asia and Oceania.
An international health alert was launched by the United Kingdom in mid-May, and cases have since increased in that country, as well as in Spain, Germany, Portugal, France, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States.
Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said in a statement that he was “deeply concerned about the spread of monkeypox”.
For WHO, governments, communities and individuals should consider “the committee’s recommendations for better community engagement in enhanced surveillance, diagnostics and risk communication and the appropriate use of therapeutics, vaccines and public health measures, including contact tracing and isolation”.
Calling on countries to collaborate and share information, WHO urged governments and manufacturers to work together to achieve global public health goals, enabling “affected populations to take medical countermeasures for monkeypox and their use through standardized questionnaires and data collection for further evaluation of the clinical effectiveness of treatment.” and evaluation of vaccine efficacy”.
source: Noticias
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