The Humanitarian Crisis Helped MPOX Spiral into Global Health Emergency
A health worker attends to Lucie Habimana, 13, an mpox patient, at a treatment centre in Munigi, eastern Congo on August 16. AP Moses Sawasawa A health worker attends to Lucie Habimana, 13, an mpox patient, at a treatment centre in Munigi, eastern Congo on August 16.
GOMA (AP):
Sarah Bagheni had a headache, fever, and itchy and unusual skin lesions for days, but she had no inkling that her symptoms might have been caused by mpox and that she might be another case in a growing global health emergency.
She also has no idea where to go to get medical help.
She and her husband live in the Bulengo displacement camp in eastern Congo, a region that is effectively ground zero for a series of mpox outbreaks in Africa.
This year’s alarming rise in cases, including a new form of the virus identified by scientists in eastern Congo, led the World Health Organization to declare it a global health emergency on Wednesday. It said the new variant could spread beyond the five African countries where it had already been detected – a timely warning that came a day before Sweden reported its first case of the new strain.
Most vulnerable unaware of the threat
In the vast central African nation of Congo, which has had more than 96 per cent of the world’s roughly 17,000 recorded cases of mpox this year – and some 500 deaths from the disease – many of the most vulnerable seem unaware of its existence or the threat that it poses.
“We know nothing about this,” Bagheni’s husband, Habumuremyiza Hire, said Thursday about mpox. “I watch her condition helplessly because I don’t know what to do. We continue to share the same room.”
Millions are thought to be out of reach of medical help or advice in the conflict-torn east, where dozens of rebel groups have been fighting Congolese army forces for years over mineral-rich areas, causing a huge displacement crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people like Bagheni and her husband have been forced into overcrowded refugee camps around Goma, while more have taken refuge in the city.
Conditions in the camps are dire and medical facilities are almost non-existent.
Mahoro Faustin, who runs the Bulengo camp, said that about three months ago, administrators first started noticing people in the camp exhibiting fever, body aches, and chills – symptoms that could signal malaria, measles, or mpox.
There is no way of knowing how many mpox cases there might be in Bulengo because of a lack of testing, he said. There haven’t been any recent health campaigns to educate the tens of thousands of people in the camp about mpox, and Faustin said he is worried about how many people might be undiagnosed.
“Just look at the overcrowding here,” he said, pointing to a sea of ramshackle tents. “If nothing is done, we will all be infected here, or maybe we are already all infected.”