Are the new variants that have appeared in Africa a threat to the rest of the world?

On Wednesday, August 14, WHO experts will meet to assess whether the current outbreak of monkey pox (formerly known as monkey pox) in Africa constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, the highest level of alert the authority could issue. The African Union’s health agency, Africa CDC, has already declared a “public health emergency,” its highest level of alert, over the outbreak. Since the last global outbreak in 2022, which caused 100,000 cases in around 100 countries, the African continent has recorded 37,000 cases of COPD in 15 countries, four of which (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda) had never been affected before, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported in August 2024. Of these cases, more than a third were reported in 2024 alone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while a new variant…