The head of the African Union’s health agency has called on Western countries to learn from
the COVID-19 pandemic and not abandon Africa amid an ongoing mpox outbreak.
Dr Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
(Africa CDC), said on Thursday that 107 new deaths and 3,160 new cases had been recorded
in the past week, just a week after his agency and the World Health Organization (WHO)
launched a continental response plan.
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the epicentre of the outbreak.
The Africa CDC has said it is short of a $600m target to tackle the disease now present in 14
nations on the continent.
Kaseya called on Western nations to help meet the funding goal “to show that they learned from
COVID”.
