Monkeypox is the seventh public health emergency the WHO has named since 2007.
On July 23, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the escalating Monkeypox outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
Prior to this declaration, a panel of WHO health advisers struggled to reach an agreement on whether the virus was spreading at an alarming rate and if it met the criteria for infections requiring international concern. The WHO’s director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, overruled this panel of health advisers on Saturday and used a designation the world’s leading health agency currently uses to describe polio and the COVID-19 pandemic.
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