New Delhi: The current monkeypox outbreak, which has infected 3417 people across 58 countries, has been declared a pandemic by World Health Network (WHN) on Thursday ahead of the World Health Organization (WHO) meeting on whether to declare the disease a global health emergency.
WHO's meeting is aimed to assess whether the continuing outbreak represents a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern", the highest level of global alert as it currently applies only to the Covid-19 pandemic and polio.
This declaration of monkeypox as a public emergency by the World Health Network indicates that the outbreak has expanded and is not limited to a single country or region, thereby immediate actions are required to prevent community transmission, it said, according to the news agency ANI.
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Monkeypox does not spread nearly as easily as Covid, and there are vaccines and treatments available, unlike the coronavirus when it emerged. But the rising cases have still raised alarm.
WHN noted the growth of cases through local community transmission around the world. It also stated the rate of growth of cases increasing week by week across multiple continents. It also warned about the greater severities of Monkeypox in children, who have been so far spared during the current outbreak and said they are likely to be infected increasingly as community transmission expands.
It also raised concerns about the danger of transmission to wildlife, including rodents such as mice, rats, squirrels, and domesticated pets, which would become a reservoir that will expand leading to the ongoing risk of human infection and the need to modify daily life due to this ongoing risk to avoid exposure in many contexts.