The U.S. government has provided significant support, including 50,000 Mpox vaccine doses to the DRC and 10,000 doses to Nigeria, along with $10 million in funding to battle the deadly disease.
President Biden recently pledged an additional 1 million vaccine doses and $500 million to support mpox response across Africa. Despite these efforts, challenges persist, including uncertain vaccine delivery, limited access to prevention tools, poor health infrastructure, ongoing conflicts, and high levels of distrust and misinformation.
As of September 26, 2024, no cases of clade I mpox have been reported in the U.S., and the CDC considers the risk to the general public to be very low. However, clade II mpox infections continue to occur in the U.S., primarily among adult gay and bisexual men.
A major outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to declare it a public health emergency. The outbreak, centered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has reported cases in several African countries and non-African nations, including Sweden and Thailand.
The current outbreak is driven by the “clade I” strain, with two variants: clade Ia primarily affecting children and clade Ib spreading mainly through sexual contact among adults. This marks the second time mpox has been declared an international emergency, following the 2022-2023 outbreak caused by the “clade II” strain, mainly impacting adult gay and bisexual men.
