Babies as young as two weeks old are contracting the deadly Mpox (monkeypox) virus in overcrowded hospitals in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Save the Children said today, noting that around 15,000 suspected cases have already been identified in the country this year, more than in the whole of 2023, as the virus spreads to other African countries. Authorities and health workers are racing against time to contain the spread of the deadly disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is already embroiled in a humanitarian crisis and has one of the world’s most fragile health systems. Both infections and deaths are more common in children than adults. The rapid spread of the virus in the country – which has reported around 90% of all cases – is putting a strain on a health system already weakened by past Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks and shortages of medical staff and supplies. “The worst case I have seen is a 6-week-old baby who was only 2 weeks old when he contracted Mpox. He is now being treated by us. He got infected because, due to overcrowding at the hospital, he and his mother were forced to share a room with another person infected with the virus, which had not yet been diagnosed at the time,” said Jacques, an epidemiologist and Mpox expert at a Save the Children partner in South Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo. “He had rashes all over his body, a high fever and his skin was starting to turn black. His parents were scared about his condition and feared he was dying.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), children are more at risk than adults of contracting the virus, also known as monkeypox: 70% of the 14,901 cases recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are children and adolescents under the age of 15, and 39% are children under the age of 5. Children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are almost four times more likely to die from smallpox than adults: WHO data show that the mortality rate for children under the age of 1 is 8.6%, compared with 2.4% for people over the age of 15. Sixty-two percent of deaths reported by May 2024 were children under the age of 5, according to the same data. WHO will meet to discuss whether the Mpox outbreak in Africa is a global public health emergency. The latest Mpox variant (Clade 1b), identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in September 2023, has now been traced to neighboring Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and Burundi. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is assessing whether the rapid spread of the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and across borders constitutes a public health emergency.
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2024-08-13 18:34:33
