The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the mpox international public health emergency (PHEIC) over for a second time.
WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced on 5 September that he had accepted the recommendation of an expert committee to end the PHEIC status owing to “sustained declines in cases and deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other affected countries including Burundi, Sierra Leone and Uganda.”
“Of course, lifting the emergency declaration does not mean the threat is over, nor that our response will stop,” he told reporters, acknowledging concerns raised the previous day by experts at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).
Africa CDC, which held a meeting a day earlier, concluded that ongoing …
