The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he is considering convening a committee of experts to determine whether the monkeypox epidemic in several African countries should qualify as an international emergency. Tedros said the WHO and the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are stepping up efforts to stop the transmission of the virus.

"However, more funding and support is needed for a comprehensive response." "I am considering convening an emergency committee on international health regulations to advise me on whether the smallpox outbreak should be declared a public health emergency of international concern," Tedros wrote on social network X (formerly Twitter).

Such a qualification is the highest level of alert that the WHO can raise, and the head of the WHO can initiate it based on the advice of the committee.

The WHO on July 11 warned of a global health threat to humans from monkeypox, expressing concern over an outbreak of a new, deadlier strain of the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda have reported several cases of the so-called monkey pox. Congo has reported more than 11.000 cases of infection, including 450 deaths. The virus was first detected in humans in 1970 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.