PRETORIA, August 13. /TASS/. The African Union’s health watchdog has declared a public health emergency on the continent due to the spread of mpox (previously known as monkeypox), Director General of Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Jean Kaseya said.

"With a heavy heart but with an unyielding commitment to our people, to our African citizens, we declare mpox as public health emergency of continental security," he said during an online media briefing.

"Mpox has now crossed borders, affecting thousands across our continent, families have been torn apart and the pain and suffering have touched every corner of our continent," the public health official added.

During the briefing, it was noted that a new wave of mpox in Africa was triggered by a rapid spread of the virus which had mutated. The new variant, dubbed Clade Ib, appears to spread more easily through routine close contact.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is at the epicenter of the new wave with the number of infections this year already surpassing 13,000 which is almost 80% of their total number in 2023. In July, the country’s government said that 450 people died of the disease this year.

Mpox is a rare viral disease which is endemic to remote regions near tropical forests of Central and Western Africa. The first case of the animal-to-human transmission of this disease was recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), this virus is usually transmitted to humans by wild animals, such as rodents and primates, while its secondary spread among humans is limited. Usually the lethality coefficient during mpox outbreaks ranges from 1% to 10% with the majority of fatalities in the younger age groups.