HARARE, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's Minister of Health and Child Care Douglas Mombeshora has urged fellow health ministers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to deploy experts to countries that have been affected by mpox as a way of curtailing the spread of the virus throughout the region.
A statement issued by the regional economic bloc's secretariat on Thursday said Mombeshora, who attended a virtual meeting of regional health ministers on Wednesday, urged the SADC to use lessons learned from previous outbreaks to mitigate against current and future outbreaks.
Mombeshora said early regional outbreak response mechanism through combined efforts remains very critical and encouraged members to mobilize the much-needed financial and human resources for the immediate response to mpox and other future outbreaks.
The meeting was convened following a directive from the 44th Ordinary SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government in Harare on Aug. 17 that the secretariat should convene an urgent meeting of health ministers to assess the impact of mpox and facilitate a coordinated regional response to control the spread of the disease.
The statement said the ministers discussed ways to strengthen public health surveillance at the national level and how cross-border disease surveillance should be coordinated to improve the rate of detection, strengthen prevention, and limit the spread of mpox.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, is an infectious disease transmitted between species from animals to humans. Several African countries have been experiencing a rapid increase in mpox cases since January.
