the World Health Organization has declared a global Public Health Emergency following an outbreak of a new strain of the empx virus in Africa the virus formerly known as monkey pox can be passed on through close contact and causes flu like symptoms and lesions on the body and can be deadly it's now been detected in at least 13 African countries but one country has been hit particularly hard the Democratic Republic of Congo empo is surging across Africa and this is Ground Zero thousands of cases have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new
outbreak grips the country it's already claimed at least 450 lives most of them children and it's showing no sign of slowing down the detection and and Rapid spread of a new clade of empo in eastern DRC its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported empo and the potential for further spread within Africa and Beyond is very Waring in addition to other outbreaks of other clades of empo in other parts of Africa it's clear that a coordinated International response is essential to stop these outbreaks and Save lives formerly known as monkey pox empx spreads
through close contact including sex causing fluik symptoms and painful pus filled lesions but this new strain is proving more infectious and even more deadly and experts fear the growing outbreak in Africa could just be the tip of the iceberg we believe that uh it's already a r for international spread and of course uh there is also the chance that he could spread Beyond Africa to other regions of the world the World Health Organization last declared empo an international Health Emergency in 2022 with cases in more than 70 countries that was largely shut down with the
help of vaccines and treatments in rich countries but very few of those are available in Africa and Global Health officials hope this new emergency declaration will Kickstart an international effort to conin the disease Julian Tang is a biologist at the University of Leicester in the UK I asked him to tell us more about the surge in empo cases and how this outbreak differs from the one two years ago the difference is really due to the different clayes or strains if you like of this empx virus The Strain from two years ago was a global strain
and the clay 2 which is the So-Cal West African strain and it proved to be much Milder and more limited in terms of clinical severity than the original CA one virus the one that's now um spreading across Africa is a branch of the Cade one virus now turned Cade 1B and this is part the original strain from the DRC Democratic Republic of Congo and this has a higher mortality is more severe clinically um and maybe increasing transmissibility compared to the original endemic clay 1A strain from DRC talk to us more about this transmissibility because the
this moox variant has now just new strain has spread to 13 countries the outbreak hundreds of people have died mainly children why has this new variant been able to spread so quickly yeah so that's a good question I think we're still looking into this but the original strain from DRC the C 1A if you like uh was limited in terms of that it would only spread Beyond uh maybe three or four generations and then it would die out and it's often transmitted from animal reservoirs in the original endemic area now it looks like the virus
has adapted better to human to human transmission again something we saw with co9 after you know several years uh but this virus has been around in Africa for many many more years we've known about over 50 or 60 years so I suspect that more cases more human cases are allowing the virus to evolve and transmit more efficiently between humans again like we saw with covid-19 and the ssov 2 virus how much of a difference do you think it'll make that the who has now declared the empo outbreak to be a global Public Health Emergency oh
it should make a great difference uh normally these fakes as we call them um pH eic's uh tend to be um announc when you want to release more funding and more resources uh to those uh those particular epidemics or pandemic uh situations um and this should hopefully allow this release of funding and resources in those African countries of course they are uh already quite strain uh resource limited uh in many of the ways should people outside of the affected regions be worried about their own health could this virus end up spreading much further and if
so what precautions should people be taking uh yes of course as we saw two years ago the clay 2 strain spread uh globally along the so-call MSM Network the uh men or sex with men's sexual network but this is much more um indiscriminate it seems to be spreading across the heterosexual population and other General populations um it may be less transmissible than the clay 2B strain turned out to be but again we need more data on this and the way it transmits is through intimate close Conta tacts of saliva kissing touching with contaminated secretions and
also there's some evidence of uh close range aerosol transmission uh after a prolonged period of contact like in the household for example or in an intimate relationship right okay we afraid we're going to have to leave it there uh Julian thank you very much for talking with us that was theologist Julian Tang at the University of leester
