The World Health Organization (WHO) regional office in Europe on Tuesday called for emergency strategies and tools to contain and eradicate COVID-19, monkeypox and polio.
“As autumn and winter approach, we anticipate an upsurge in the number of cases, with or without a resurgence of seasonal influenza in Europe,” said Hans Kluge, regional director of WHO Europe, in a press release. press on Tuesday.
The coronavirus has caused 3,000 deaths in the Europe region in the past week alone, which is around a third of the global total, the WHO said.
The recently launched Autumn-Winter Strategy once morest COVID-19 in the European region outlines what countries need to do to control SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses, Kluge said.
He also called on countries to use influenza vaccines in conjunction with COVID-19 vaccines where possible.
In addition, there are now more than 22,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox in 43 countries in the Europe region, representing one third of the global total. However, Mr Kluge believes Europe can eliminate the continued human-to-human transmission of monkeypox in the region “if we commit to it and dedicate the necessary resources to it”.
This epidemic is certainly slowing in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, as well as in other countries, but Europeans must urgently “step up their efforts”, estimated Mr Kluge.
The WHO released two comprehensive policy reports this week, one detailing the policy goals and actions needed to contain and eventually eliminate monkeypox, while the other focuses specifically on the use of vaccines. once morest monkeypox.
These reports “provide a clear message on what we consider our ultimate goal: to first control, and ultimately achieve the sustainable elimination of monkeypox infection in the European region,” Kluge said.
As Europe celebrates its 20th year as a polio-free region, the WHO official said “the exciting progress towards global eradication remains very fragile”.
In recent years, vaccine-derived polioviruses have been detected in Israel, Tajikistan, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, according to the WHO.
“This is a wake-up call for all of us. It is our common responsibility to eradicate polio from the world,” she said.
Polio, monkeypox and COVID-19 have all demonstrated that a local epidemic threat can quickly become global,” a lesson that would be foolish to ignore, especially in today’s world,” Mr. Kluge.
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