GENEVA: Mpox remains an international public health emergency, the World Health Organization said Thursday after deciding the epidemic still merits the highest level of alert, with cases rising and its geographic spread widening.
“The mpox upsurge continues to meet the criteria of a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC),” said a WHO statement.
The emergency committee on mpox met for the third time on Tuesday and advised WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the situation still constituted a PHEIC.
The decision was “based on the continuing rise in numbers and geographic spread, the violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo — which hampers the response — as well as a lack of funding to implement the response plan,” said the brief statement.
Tedros concurred with the committee’s advice, extending the PHEIC first declared on August 14 last year.
A PHEIC is the highest level of alarm under the International Health Regulations, which are legally binding on 196 countries.
The UN health agency’s chief had declared the emergency amid a rapid spread of the disease, formerly known as monkeypox, in Africa and especially in the DR Congo.
Mpox is caused by a virus from the same family as smallpox. It can be transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed between people through close physical contact.
The disease, which was first detected in humans in 1970 in the DR Congo, then known as Zaire, causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, and can be deadly.
It has two subtypes: clade 1 and clade 2.
The virus, long endemic in central Africa, gained international prominence in May 2022 when clade 2 spread around the world, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men.
Nearly 128,000 mpox cases have been laboratory confirmed across 130 countries since then, including 281 deaths, WHO data shows.
The WHO declared a global health emergency in July 2022, but thanks to vaccination and awareness drives that helped stem the spread, that declaration was lifted in May 2023.
Just a year later, however, a new two-pronged epidemic broke out mainly in the DR Congo, with both the original clade 1a strain and a new strain, clade 1b.
This prompted the WHO’s new emergency declaration last August.
To date, community spread of the clade 1b strain has been confirmed in the DRC and five other African nations, and it has been detected in another 15 countries around the world in connection with travel, WHO data shows.
The DRC confirmed more than 13,000 mpox cases and 43 deaths in 2024, and the country confirmed more than 2,000 cases in the first five weeks of this year — more than half of the cases confirmed globally.
WHO decides mpox epidemic still global health emergency
https://arab.news/2p9u6
WHO decides mpox epidemic still global health emergency
- “The mpox upsurge continues to meet the criteria of a public health emergency of international concern,” said WHO
- The decision was “based on the continuing rise in numbers and geographic spread”
Philippine city in state of calamity as landfill collapse death toll rises
- 16 people remain missing under piles of waste nearly a week after the incident
- On Monday, the city’s mayor said ‘signs of life’ were still detected under debris
MANILA: Cebu City in the central Philippines has been in a state of calamity since last week’s collapse of a landfill that left at least 20 people dead, authorities said on Wednesday.
A huge mound of garbage at the 15-hectare Binaliw open landfill in Cebu City collapsed suddenly on Jan. 8, burying more than 100 workers and nearby structures underneath.
To release additional funds for emergency response and recovery operations, the Cebu City Council approved on Tuesday a resolution declaring a state of calamity.
After managing to save 18 injured people in the first days of the search, rescuers pulled out the bodies of several victims on Wednesday.
“The number of employees reported missing following the Binaliw landfill incident that occurred on the afternoon of January 8, 2026, has decreased to 16,” the Cebu City Public Information Office stated.
“The reduction in the number of missing individuals follows the recovery of several bodies at the site today, January 14, 2026. With these recoveries, the confirmed death toll has now risen to 20.”
The Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office said that with the amount of debris, its responders were facing “difficult site conditions,” but remained on the ground to recover all the missing persons.
The hope of finding survivors was reignited by the announcement of Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival, who said in a press conference on Monday that a team from APEX Mining in Davao brought life-detection equipment that indicated that “there are still signs of life” at the disaster site.
The Cebu City Council announced Friday as a day of mourning for the victims of the Binaliw landslide, which “claimed lives and caused immeasurable grief to the affected families and the community.”
