Monkeypox is emergency of international concern: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, reported CNN.

The decision was announced Saturday morning after WHO convened its second emergency committee on the issue on Thursday.

“I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Saturday morning, reported CNN.

Tedros said while the committee was unable to reach a consensus, he came to the decision after considering the five elements required on deciding whether an outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.

He added that while he was declaring monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern, “For the moment this is an outbreak that’s concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those who have multiple partners, that means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups,”reported CNN.

WHO defines a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, as “an extraordinary event” that constitutes a “public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease” and “to potentially require a coordinated international response.”

The PHEIC designation comes from the International Health Regulations created in 2005, and it represents an international agreement to help prevent and respond to public health risks that have the potential to spread around the globe, reported CNN.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes the regulations as “a legally binding agreement of 196 countries to build the capability to detect and report potential public health emergencies worldwide. IHR require that all countries have the ability to detect, assess, report, and respond to public health events,” as reported by CNN.