United Nations agencies have expressed concern about the spread of the monkeypox virus, now known as the politically correct term, mpox, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DR Congo) refugee camps. There are 42 suspected cases in the over 2 million displaced people in DR Congo.
These numbers look a little bit like the inflated COVID numbers. Fourty-two “suspected” (so not even 100% certain there are that many) out of 2 million is hardly a cause for concern, but the ruling classes need something to gin up the fear among the slaves that keep falling for this. These suspected cases were discovered in refugee camps, however, meaning the people are likely to be in close contact with each other.
On Tuesday, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported that the 42 suspected cases of mpox had been identified not only in refugee camps but in transit centers in South Kivu, a region in eastern DRC that hosts nearly 2 million internally displaced people and refugees, according to a report by RT.
There are now over 7 million people displaced across the DRC, which amounts to one of the highest levels of displacement in the world. Because of this, the risk of disease spread is significant as many people are individuals fleeing internal conflicts, and natural disasters, and those arriving from neighboring countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan.
“[Displaced people] have no space to isolate when they develop symptoms of the disease,” he added. “In these areas, the virus threatens to exacerbate an already impossible situation for a population devastated by decades of conflict, forced displacement, appalling human rights abuses, and a lack of international assistance,” the UN official stated.
WHO Declares Mpox A Global Public Health Emergency
The World Health Organization (WHO) has so far reported more than 18,910 cases of mpox and 615 deaths this year. The majority of cases and deaths have occurred in the DR Congo. However, many of these cases are still classified as suspected, pending laboratory confirmation, according to WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris. “We are seeing outbreaks of both Clade 1a and Clade 1b,” Dr. Harris added
The mpox virus was first identified in macaque monkeys in the late 1950s. Human monkeypox received its name in the 1970s, long before the WHO released its ‘Best Practices in Naming Diseases’ guidebook in 2015. The first human case was reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire) in 1970, where the disease remains endemic, just like the flu and common cold in the United States.
