Strategic vaccinationβ efforts will target people at the highest risk such as βclose contacts of recent cases and healthcare workers, to interrupt transmission chains,β the agency said.
The WHO plan will focus on βimplementing comprehensive surveillance, prevention, readiness, and response strategies; advancing research and equitable access to medical countermeasures like diagnostic tests and vaccines; minimizing animal-to-human transmission; and empowering communities to actively participate in outbreak prevention and control,β according to a statement.
Officials say that a subvariant of the virus has caused global concern because it seems to spread more easily through routine close contact.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the Aug. 26 statement that the mpox outbreak, which originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, βcan be controlled and can be stopped.β
βDoing so requires a comprehensive and coordinated plan of action between international agencies and national and local partners, civil society, researchers and manufacturers, and our Member States,β he said.
