The World Health Organisation declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. This was informed by the fact that reports were received of its identification in different countries of different continents in the world.
The WHO fears that there is a possibility of the disease spreading further in Africa. It has already been noted that several outbreaks of different clades of mpox have occurred in different countries, with different modes of transmission of different levels of risk.
It is reported that the WHO is working with different countries and vaccine manufacturers to make vaccine available so that people of the world will be protected from it. These are steps in the right direction and they should be encouraged in order to avoid the outbreak spreading wider.
In the Gambia here, it is necessary for the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the WHO office to work hard in the area of sensitisation as prevention is always better than cure. In the event that a vaccine is unavailable or the adequacy is not up to expectation, the awareness would have gone a long way in preventing its spread.
Learning from past experiences, the Government of the Gambia must work hard to make sure that the officials entrusted with the prevention of, treatment of or the management of mpox see the health of the general public as paramount and not be focused on how much money the international community may or may not pump into it.
A healthy nation, they say, is a wealthy nation. Therefore, let it be known that without healthy citizens there cannot be any meaningful progress in terms of economic advancement of the country. Mpox, like all other outbreaks, poses a serious health challenge to the country and everything possible must be done to ensure that the harm it does is minimized if not avoided completely.
