Scaling up mpox outbreak response in Sierra Leone

Freetown ‒ Sierra Leone is deploying a range of measures to manipulate and finish an outbreak of mpox in which 20 cases have up to now been reported since the disease used to be confirmed on 13 January 2025.

The Nationwide Public Successfully being Agency, with support from companions, including World Successfully being Organization (WHO), is stepping up disease surveillance to mercurial detect cases, provide care and give up further spread of infection. With technical and logistical support from WHO, emergency public successfully being staff are enhancing crammed with life case search and investigation for a extra sensible outbreak response.

Sierra Leone has been reinforcing preparedness and skill to answer to public successfully being emergencies in most current years. In November 2024, WHO supported the training of 65 successfully being staff and laboratory personnel in diagnostic procedures and sample series. Additionally, 160 successfully being staff had been trained on integrated plan covering surveillance, case management, infection prevention and management, laboratory practices, and likelihood verbal exchange and neighborhood engagement. This proactive plan ensured frontline staff had been prepared to manipulate the mpox outbreak from the onset.

To further succor curb the spread of the disease, a consignment of 61 300 vaccine doses is anticipated to be delivered in the coming weeks in Sierra Leone resulting from support from WHO and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Africa Centers for Illness Modify and Prevention and UNICEF. These organizations will quilt operational prices for the vaccination targeting at-likelihood other folks, including successfully being staff. Additionally, efforts, coordinated by companions, including UNICEF, are underway to increase public awareness concerning the disease as successfully as succor preventive measures and the importance of seeking sanatorium treatment.

WHO has already delivered over US$ 38 000 value of necessary laboratory supplies and personal protective equipment, including gloves, robes, aprons, face shields, biohazard extinguish baggage, and infrared thermometers. Supplies also included genomics sequencing reagents, PCR kits for 400 tests, GeneXpert cartridges for 50 tests, and genomic sequencing kits for forty five tests.

Clinical care is also being reinforced. WHO has procured treatment kits for 20 inpatients and 180 outpatients and is providing technical trip to clinicians and other responders by assisting in the planning of response actions and developing case management guidelines and training programmes.

“In spite of a form of challenges, WHO has efficiently mobilized sources in any admire ranges to dispute basic commodities, including vaccines,” says Dr George Ameh, WHO Consultant in Sierra Leone. “We’re going to be in a position to continue to support the country to bring this most current outbreak under management.”

An upsurge of mpox (formerly identified as monkeypox) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its spread to neighbouring international locations used to be declared a public successfully being emergency of international predicament on 14 August 2024. At crammed with 22 international locations in the African map have reported cases since 2024, of which 12 presently have crammed with life outbreaks.

WHO and companion organizations are working intently with the affected international locations to contain these outbreaks. According to Professor Foday Sahr, the Director of Sierra Leone’s Nationwide Public Successfully being Agency, the support by WHO “continues to be certain our ministry and agency succeed in safeguarding the successfully being of our voters.”

Mpox is a viral disease precipitated by an orthopoxvirus. It spreads mainly thru shut contact with any individual who has mpox, causing a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes, and fever. In severe cases, the disease can even be lethal.