The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced this Friday (05.09.2025) that the MPOX, which mainly affects Africa, ceased to be an urgency of international public health due to the fall in the number of cases and deaths.
Mpox is a disease caused by a virus of the same family as that of smallpox. It is characterized by skin lesions, such as pustules, fever and muscle pains.
“More than a year ago, I declared the emergency of international public health for the propagation of the MPOX in Africa, following the advice of an emergency committee,” but on Thursday the group considered that it was no longer necessary and “I accepted their opinion,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference.
Declaration “does not mean that the threat is over”
“This decision is based on the sustained decrease in the number of cases and deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in other affected countries, in particular Burundi, Sierra Leone and Uganda,” he said.
However, Tedros warned that this “does not mean that the threat is over”, nor that the WHO response “will stop.”
First identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, the MPOX remained confined for a long time to a dozen African countries. But in 2022 it began to extend to the rest of the world, especially to developed countries where the virus had never circulated.
RR AFP/Reuters
