Professor Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, has backed the World Health Organisation’s call to classify the recent monkeypox outbreak as a ‘public health emergency of international concern.’
She says that in order for a disease to be attributed the emergency label, it must meet a high threshold and be proven to to be a public health risk internationally that requires a global response.
Sridhar believes that the rapid rise and spread in cases has been the determining factor that led to the organisation’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to overrule a split emergency committee, to demand that the highest level of alert should be issued over the outbreak.
