Monkeypox Transmission Can Be Stopped Outside Endemic Countries, Says WHO

WHO's emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove said the outbreaks in non-endemic nations can be contained and human-to-human transmission of the infection halted.

Monkepox lesions on the hands of a person infected with the monkeypox virus ( Image Source : Getty Images )

New Delhi: Amid the rising cases of monkeypox virus infection in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday said that it can be contained in non-endemic countries and no evidence yet to support that the monkeypox virus had mutated. A senior authority of the worldwide wellbeing body said the infectious illness that was endemic in the west and focal Africa had tended not to change. WHO's emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove said the outbreaks in non-endemic nations can be contained and human-to-human transmission of the infection halted.

"We want to stop human-to-human transmission. We can do this in non-endemic countries... This is a containable situation," the WHO's emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove told a live interaction on the U.N. health agency's social media channels.

"The more than 100 suspected and confirmed cases in the recent outbreak in Europe and North America had not yet been severe," he added.

Rosamund Lewis, top of the smallpox secretariat, part of the WHO Emergencies Program, said mutations were normally lower with this infection, despite the fact that genome sequencing of cases would help in the understanding of the current outbreak.

However, "this is the first time we're seeing cases across many countries at the same time and people who have not travelled to the endemic regions in Africa", she said.

She cited Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"It is primarily in the animal kingdom in forested areas. Now we're seeing it more in urban areas," she said.