WHO Declares Mpox Global Health Emergency

[timr]

Keep in mind that this is spreading in countries with extremely poor health care systems, and a high baseline level of disease. Any estimate of mortality, based on current examples, is not reflective of what would take place in a first-world country.

[etiam]

For small numbers. If the healthcare capacity gets saturated so-called first-world countries might not do so much better. Massive HIV prevalence is going to distort the case fatality ratios for sure, but on the other hand I'd say high baseline exposure to serious infectious diseases could well be an argument for resilience rather than vulnerability.

[walterbell]

> A previous [WHO] mpox public health emergency, declared in 2022, was caused by the relatively mild Clade 2.

July 2022, https://www.science.org/content/article/declaring-monkeypox-...

  The World Health Organization (WHO) today declared the global spread of monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), even though a special advisory committee again declined to recommend the action. This is the first time since the PHEIC system was created in 2005 that the agency has made such a declaration without the panel’s endorsement.  “This is big, unprecedented decision-making by the director general,” says Clare Wenham, a global health expert at the London School of Economics who has studied the history of PHEICs.

This time around, a WHO PHEIC declaration can test-drive the June 2024 amendments to the 2005 IHR (International Health Regulations) treaty, which were a fallback after failing to gain consensus on a global pandemic treaty, https://www.who.int/news/item/01-06-2024-world-health-assemb...

  World Health Assembly, the annual meeting of its 194 member countries, today agreed a package of critical amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), and made concrete commitments to completing negotiations on a global pandemic agreement within a year, at the latest, and possibly in 2024. These critical actions have been taken in order to ensure comprehensive, robust systems are in place in all countries to protect the health and safety of all people everywhere from the risk of future outbreaks and pandemics.

[jonah]

Anyone know the logic for why it was renamed from Monkeypox to Mpox?

[haswell]

The WHO explains their rationale here: https://www.who.int/news/item/28-11-2022-who-recommends-new-...

[nammi]

I'm not saying this is something that should be ignored, but it feels out of place for HN.

From the guidelines:

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

[bobthepanda]

We talk about health topics all the time on HN. That particular thing is mostly for obvious flamewar bait.