At least 25 cases of a dangerous new strain of mpox spreading through DR Congo have been detected in the eastern city of Goma, mostly in camps housing people fleeing a surrounding conflict, health authorities said on Wednesday, July 10, Reuters reports.
Goma is the capital and largest city of the neighbouring North Kivu Province. Mpox, formerly called monkeypox, is a viral infection and can be deadly.
ALSO READ: New mpox strain in DR Congo 'most dangerous yet' – reports
Unstable DR Congo has seen 20,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths from mpox, mainly among children, since the start of 2023. Over 11,000 cases, including 443 deaths, have been reported so far this year.
Authorities recently approved the use of vaccines to tackle the upsurge, but none are currently available outside of clinical trials in the country.
ALSO READ: Rwanda ‘closely monitoring’ monkeypox outbreak
The head of the national response team against the mpox epidemic, Cris Kacita, said in an interview that most of the new reported cases were in displaced people camps.
He said cases were infected with a new strain of the virus that is spreading in South Kivu Province.
ALSO READ: WHO renames monkeypox as 'mpox'
The World Heath Organization (WHO) and scientists raised the alarm last month about the mpox situation in DR Congo, including the spread of a new strain of mpox spreading in South Kivu.
Mpox has been endemic in DR Congo for decades but a new variant of the clade I of the virus emerged last year. It is a viral infection that spreads through close contact, causing flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. Most cases are mild but it can kill.
A different, less severe form of mpox – clade IIb – spread globally in 2022, largely through sexual contact among men who have sex with men. This prompted the WHO to declare a public health emergency that has now ended, although there are still cases and the agency has said mpox remains a public health threat.
"The national biomedical research institute in Goma has sequenced the virus and this proves that the virus has been circulating for a long time in the city of Goma", Kacita said.
"The risk here is the promiscuity in the camps and the speed with which the epidemic is spreading", he warned.
As reported, hundreds of thousands of people who fled conflict in DR Congo's conflict-hit east are staying in overcrowded camps in and around Goma.
In May, WHO released a strategic framework for enhancing prevention and control of mpox.
The new framework was meant to guide health authorities, communities and other stakeholders in preventing and controlling mpox outbreaks, eliminating human-to-human transmission of the disease, and reducing spillover of the virus from animals to humans.
According to WHO, Mpox is a viral illness caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV). It can cause a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes and fever. Most people fully recover, but some get very sick. The virus transmits from person to person through close, including sexual, contact. It also has animal reservoirs in east, central and west Africa, where spillovers from animals to humans can occasionally occur, sparking further outbreaks.
There are two different clades of the virus: clade I and clade II. Clade I outbreaks are deadlier than clade II outbreaks.
A major emergence of mpox linked to clade II began in 2017, and since 2022, has spread to all regions of the world. Between July 2022 and May 2023, the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. While that outbreak has largely subsided, cases and deaths continue to be reported, illustrating that low-level transmission continues around the world.