As the number of mpox-related deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighbouring countries continues to climb, international cooperation is needed to recognise the global risk posed by infectious diseases, and “to deal with them on a global basis.”
That is according to Dr Marc-Alain Widdowson, the high-threat pathogens lead at the Europe branch of the World Health Organization (WHO), who was speaking on GlobalData’s Thematic Intelligence podcast.
Widdowson noted the WHO’s calls for a pandemic treaty and pointed to both the “moral” and “self-interested” benefits to a global approach to the current outbreak of the clade 1b strain – a more severe variant affecting both adults and children.
“There’s a dual responsibility that governments need to think about,” he explained. “I understand the electoral pressure to worry about what is going on within your own borders – and that is understandable to a point – but it is essentially, at the end of the day, a bit self-defeating, because if you don’t tackle the problem outside your walls then eventually they will get breached.”
Widdowson spoke alongside Bronwyn Nichol, senior officer of public health in emergencies at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). She pointed to the challenges associated with stopping the spread and highlighted the need for international cooperation to provide sufficient mpox vaccinations to affected communities.
“There have been pledges of vaccine stocks to be delivered to Africa, but it is less than 15% of what we need,” Nichol said. “One of the vaccines is a two-dose regimen, so that also means more is needed if we’re going to be able to deliver. Besides just the vaccines themselves, there’s also all the support that needs to go in, whether it’s cold chain management, the logistics of moving the vaccines, making sure that they’re accepted by communities.”
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By GlobalDataAn estimated 10 million mpox vaccines are needed across Africa, and some communities are particularly at risk. The WHO highlights the need for vaccines for healthcare workers; those living with mpox-infected relatives or partners; those with multiple sexual partners; and sex workers and their clients.
A global mpox response will require international cooperation, but lessons should have been learnt from previous experiences, including from the Covid-19 pandemic. However, according to Widdowson, memories are short, and governments are too quick to become comfortable once immediate threats have passed.
“The lesson that we keep on learning and forgetting is that infectious diseases are unpredictable. We’ve always got to remember that we can never be happy with the status quo. We’ve always got to think that things are going to blow up in our faces … what we haven’t really learnt from Covid is that, for us all to be safe, the disease needs to be tackled globally. The lesson from Covid really was that something that happens in one part of the world will very quickly affect the rest of the world.”
