Mpox outbreak in Africa declared global health emergency
Medical facilities that provide treatment to gay and bisexual men in some East African countries are already collaborating with them to prevent the spread of a new wave of mpox cases after the World Health Organization on Wednesday declared a global health emergency.
The collaboration, both in Uganda and Kenya, comes amid WHO’s latest report released on Aug. 12, which reveals that nine out of every 10 reported mpox cases are men with sex as the most common cause of infection.
The global mpox outbreak report — based on data that national authorities collected between January 2022 and June of this year — notes 87,189 of the 90,410 reported cases were men.
Ninety-six percent of whom were infected through sex. Sexual contact as the leading mode of transmission accounted for 19,102 of 22,802 cases, followed by non-sexual person-to-person contact.
