At the end of May 2022, the World Health Organization said that declaring monkeypox a pandemic was not a concern to consider. But, if the World Health Network (WHN) gets its way, the WHO will go ahead and make that declaration soon.
Announcing that there are now 3,417 confirmed monkeypox cases in 58 countries, the WHN said they were pronouncing it a pandemic and it planned to urge the WHO to do likewise. WHO officials are meeting June 23, 2022, to decide their position on a monkeypox outbreak designation.
“The WHO needs to urgently declare its own Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) — the lessons of not declaring a PHEIC immediately in early January 2020 should be remembered as a history lesson of what acting late on an epidemic can mean for the world,” said Eric Feigl-Ding, Ph.D., epidemiologist and health economist, and cofounder of WHN.
SOURCES:
World Health Network June 22, 2022
USA Today May 30, 2022