Geneva – Following the announcements from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that mpox is now a public health emergency of continental and international concern, Unitaid is in discussions with Africa CDC, WHO and Unitaid’s implementing partners to determine how our expertise and active programs could be best used as part of the response. The mpox emergency can and must be contained – and to do so, the world must urgently increase access to diagnostic tests, lifesaving clinical care and vaccines for the people affected.
We are focused on protecting the most vulnerable people
Children, pregnant women and people with weak immune systems, including people with advanced HIV disease, are at greater risk of developing complications and dying from mpox. We are coordinating with implementing partners to determine how to increase access to clinical care and prevention tools in our programs, including those working with people with advanced HIV disease and other populations at risk, as we did during the previous mpox emergency in 2022.
Even before the declaration of the new emergency last week, our programs had anticipated the potential need to address mpox. Concretely, our THRIVE program is already supporting the HIV program in Nigeria to improve outbreak notification through established national surveillance structures. Learnings from this work will be disseminated to inform implementation approaches and pandemic preparedness planning across the region, including the other four THRIVE program countries Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
We will draw on our expertise in responding to global health emergencies
Responding to global health emergencies is a priority in Unitaid’s strategy and we have a strong track record in getting tests, treatments and tools to people who need them most in a health emergency. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we played a leading role in the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-Accelerator), a groundbreaking collaboration to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments. As part of the response to mpox, we are in discussions with many of these same partners, including Africa CDC, FIND, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and WHO, to accelerate equitable, affordable access to critical tests and treatments for all people affected by the disease.
Access to effective medical countermeasures is an urgent priority
In the global response to the mpox emergency, it is critical that the world draws on the painful lessons learned during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, where lifesaving diagnostics, treatments and vaccines, as well as other medical countermeasures including protective equipment, were slow to arrive and not equitably distributed.
There are currently serious access gaps in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa for mpox vaccines, limited access to diagnostics and no effective treatment other than clinical care. At the moment, there is only a PCR test available for mpox – an accurate but slow diagnostics tool that is not widely available in the affected countries. As shown during the COVID-19 pandemic, the development and supply of easy-to-use rapid tests early in an outbreak are critical to diagnosing people with the disease, particularly those in rural or remote areas or low-resource settings without access to PCR tests. Testing and disease surveillance are critical to containing an outbreak, to getting affected people on treatment, to monitoring people exposed to the infected person, and to tracking the spread of the virus.
Research and development into new treatments must be urgently scaled up to meet the needs of affected people and to prepare for further escalation of the current outbreak. Until specific treatments are available, health facilities in the affected countries must be supported to provide the necessary clinical care for people affected by mpox, including access to necessary painkillers, wound care and antibiotics for people who develop infections.
Four years ago, COVID-19 showed the world that diseases know no borders. The spread of mpox across several countries in Africa and confirmation of mpox in Sweden and beyond is a clear reminder of the interconnectedness of our world and that global health emergencies require a coordinated, global response.
About Unitaid
Unitaid is a global health agency engaged in finding innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases more quickly, cheaply, and effectively, in low- and middle-income countries. Its work includes funding initiatives to address major diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, as well as HIV co-infections and co-morbidities such as cervical cancer and hepatitis C, and cross-cutting areas, such as fever management. Unitaid is now applying its expertise to address challenges in advancing new therapies and diagnostics for the COVID-19 pandemic, serving as a key member of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. Unitaid is hosted by the World Health Organization. For more information, visit http://www.unitaid.org.
Media contacts
Kyle Wilkinson, Communications Officer, Unitaid
Mobile: +41 79 445 17 45
Email: wilkinsonk@unitaid.who.int