News Monitor
The fast-moving clade 1b strain has disproportionately affected children in DRC and in Burundi, where they face severe health risks due to hunger, displacement, and limited healthcare.
The largest number of vaccines â 85% of the 899,000 doses â will go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reporting four out of every five laboratory-confirmed cases in Africa this year.
About a quarter of the population in the DRC continues to face acute hunger, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released on 28 October.
The vaccination effort will begin in North Kivu and then be rolled out in 11 of the most affected zones, prioritising health workers, contacts in the transmission chain and at-risk groups.
Prolonged conflict, serious human rights abuses and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law are unleashing grave suffering on internally displaced Congolese and refugees.
The appeal aims to reach children affected by the outbreak in Burundi, CAR, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, where the clade 1 variant is on the rise and where thousands of children are at risk.
The UN Refugee Agency needs $21.4 million until the end of the year to urgently scale up critical response and prevention efforts for refugees in countries impacted by the mpox emergency.
More than 14,000 schools have been forced to close due to violence and insecurity as of June 2024, impacting the learning of hundreds of thousands of children across the region.
Cases in the eastern province of South Kivu are spreading more than twice as fast in children as in the general population, as health workers race to curb the spread of the virus.
The trends that led to unprecedented levels of internally displaced people at the end of 2023 continued into the first half of 2024 and, in some cases, already set new records.
In South Kivu Province, one of the hardest hit by mpox, at least 42 suspected cases have been identified among the refugee population. Cases have also been recorded among refugees in Congo and Rwanda.
The plan covers the six-month period of September 2024-February 2025, envisioning a US$135 million funding need for the response by WHO, Member States, partners including Africa CDC and researchers.
DR Congo: Mpox outbreak raises alarm in eastern and southern Africa as cases increase among children
The new variant of the mpox virus (clade Ib) has been identified in all affected countries except South Africa, which is causing concern due to its potential for wider transmission across age groups.
Since the start of the year, an estimated 8,772 children have contracted the disease - more than half of the countryâs 15,664 total reported cases - according to the latest available data.
With more than 17,000 suspected or confirmed cases and a death toll of 500 deaths in at least 12 countries, the epidemic has surpassed the scale of previous years. The case fatality rate is at 3.2%.
The number of people expected to require food aid in the region is likely to exceed 30 million in the 2024-25 lean season, fuelled by drought and conflicts in parts of DR Congo and Mozambique.
Just two months into the 2024 rainy season, torrential rains and severe flooding have affected 716,473 people in the CAR, Chad, CĂŽte d'Ivoire, DR Congo, Liberia, Niger and Togo.
With record levels of internal displacement, acute food insecurity, and gender-based violence, urgent and concerted action is needed to stem the worsening humanitarian situation in eastern DR Congo.
As the escalating violence triggers massive displacement, the mission head tells Security Council the situation is "one of the most severe, complex and neglected humanitarian crises of our timesâ.
As of October last year, 6.9 million people were displaced across DRC, a number expected to increase. In North Kivu alone, by the end of May, 1.77 million people had been displaced.
Goma has gradually been surrounded by several front-lines, with between 600,000 and one million people displaced people being crammed alongside the cityâs two million residents, says MSF.
Uganda hosts the most refugees and asylum-seekers in Africa, with almost 1.7 million people mainly from South Sudan and DRC, yet it was among UNHCRâs 13 top underfunded operations in 2023.