- Wednesday, March 12, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
A TOP Indian epidemiologist has slammed the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying the latter’s announcing the monkeypox outbreak as a public health emergency was premature since the disease poses low severity with a rate threat of increased outbreak worldwide.
Raman R Gangakhedkar, former head scientist of epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi, told Moneycontrol on Monday (25) that monkeypox is a “self-limiting disease”.
“This is a self-limiting disease. If people get infected, they may get lesions but chances of fatality are extremely rare. From my viewpoint, declaring monkeypox a public health emergency is a premature move. I don’t think the conditions are strong enough for declaring this disease a public health emergency,” he said.
While the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the WHO was yet to reach a consensus on whether the monkeypox outbreak constituted a public health emergency of international concern, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, decided that an outbreak in over 70 nations qualified as a global emergency.
According to Gangakhedkar, declaration of a disease as an emergency cannot be done just on the basis of its detection in various parts of the world, according to Moneycontrol. He said it requires an overall assessment of transmission and mortality rate. Monkeypox’s symptoms are similar to smallpox but less severe.
Gangakhedkar said declaration of a disease as an emergency can’t be done just on the basis of detection in different parts of the world. It requires an overall assessment of transmission and mortality threat. The disease’s symptoms are similar to smallpox but less severe.
“Monkeypox has now been detected in Europe and the US and several other countries, but if you see other conditions like mortality, the spread potential and the infected pool of the population, all these remain very, very low,” he said.
According to the WHO, monkeypox is transmitted to humans through close contact with an infected person or animal, or with material contaminated with the virus. It is usually a self-limited disease with symptoms lasting between two to four weeks. Recently, the case fatality ratio has been around three to six percent.
When asked that the majority of infections in the current outbreak in men who have sexual encounters with men, especially those who have multiple partners, Gangakhedkar, who worked on HIV prevention and control strategies in India, said connecting monkeypox with any particular sexuality or gender identity would not be right.
“We must be careful about linking monkeypox with a particular sexuality because then it may lead to stigmatisation. This disease can’t be termed as a disease for any particular sexuality or a gender identity, as further studies are needed. Also, how this disease transmits in a couple setting is still unknown,” he said, adding.
“Any form of association of monkeypox to a sexuality will increase the chances of people not coming forward fearing disclosure of their sexual identity.”
