The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Rwanda’s health minister has revealed that although the deadly Marburg virus outbreak in their country is lessening due to vaccinations of the most susceptible individuals, such as healthcare workers, Mpox cases are still spreading to new African nations.
Early in October, Rwanda started giving out doses of the Marburg virus vaccine to contain an outbreak of the disease that resembles Ebola in the East African nation.
According to Health Minister Sabin Nsanzimana, the number of new infections has now dropped by more than 50% as compared to the first two weeks. She also stated that most patients were healing in medical facilities and that the nation had gone days without any new cases or fatalities.
“Overall, the trend is very encouraging, very positive, both on the new infections declining significantly, and also the mortality reducing,” Nsanzimana told reporters in an online briefing.
According to the ministry, there have been 15 fatalities and 62 confirmed instances of viral hemorrhagic fever as of late. According to him, nine patients were still receiving treatment while 38 had fully recovered from the illness.
At the same briefing, Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa CDC, said that the Mpox outbreak, which the World Health Organisation had labelled a public health emergency of worldwide concern, was still spreading over the continent.
According to Kaseya, the afflicted countries increased from six African Union members in April to eighteen in October.
“We don’t want to see all African countries being affected. This is why we need to intensify our efforts,” he said.
According to Africa CDC data, there have been over 42,000 suspected cases of Mpox in the continent, with 1,100 deaths reported so far this year.
Kaseya stated that although over $800 million has been committed to the organization’s fight against Mpox, donors are taking their time to provide the funds and vaccines that are required to speed up the response.
“We want now to see concrete action on the ground to stop this outbreak… We cannot continue like that. We need to save the lives of people, we need to give a future to our continent.”