MPox is a Global Health Emergency, Again

Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

On August 14th, the World Health Organization declared MPOX a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern." This is the highest level of alarm that the WHO can issue to confront a public health crisis, and it was triggered in response to a rapidly spreading outbreak in Central Africa.

As my guest, Dr. Eric Toner, explains, this MPOX outbreak is different from the one two years ago due to the fact that this new strain of the virus is both more deadly and more transmissible. Dr. Eric Toner is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. He explains the differences between the strains and what we know so far about how MPOX is spreading within Central Africa and, more recently, to other continents. We have a lengthy discussion about how to contain the outbreak, which includes deploying effective vaccines. However, the problem is that the supply is limited and controlled by just a handful of vaccine manufacturing companies.