Mpox Cases Surge in Goma Camps Amid Ongoing Conflict
The scars from the mpox pustules are still visible on 7-year old Grace Kabuo’s face, as well as on the faces of a handful of other children she lives near and plays with in a camp for displaced people near Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Grace has recovered, but her mother Denise Kahindo says she is still unsure how her daughter was infected earlier this month.
Grace had one of the first confirmed mpox infections in the growing camps near Goma, where around 750,000 people have fled fighting between the M23 rebel group and the Congolese government.
There have been 35 confirmed cases of mpox in Goma since July 10, mainly among adults living in the displacement camps. The cases were caused by a new variant of mpox that was first seen in a neighboring province, which seems to be better at transmitting between people than previous strains.
But doctors treating patients at a nearby facility, a former Ebola treatment center in Munigi, said they have also seen 130 suspected mpox cases, almost entirely in under 18-year olds, in the last four weeks.
“Fifty percent are even less than five years old,” said Dr Pierre-Olibier Ngadjole, a medical advisor for Medair, a charity helping with treating and transporting patients to the center. “You know the children, they play together… and in the displaced person camps, people are side-by-side.”
The cases are an escalation of an mpox outbreak in Congo that has already seen around 27,000 cases, and claimed more than 1,100 lives, since the beginning of 2023.
Mpox, a viral infection that spreads through close contact, is usually mild but can kill. It causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body.
Another clade of mpox, clade IIb, caused an international health emergency when it spread globally in 2022, mainly through sexual contact among men who have sex with men.
There are no vaccines or specific treatments for mpox available in Congo outside of clinical trials, although they are available in other countries.
