Mpox Emergency Declared Over in Africa — but Angola's Cholera Outbreak Rages

Africa's long battle with mpox has reached a turning point. The World Health Organization has declared that the outbreak no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, after confirmed cases across the continent fell to fewer than 200 per week — a fraction of the caseloads that triggered the emergency declaration.

The decision, announced by WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the advice of an expert emergency committee, acknowledges genuine progress. Still, the scale of what the continent has endured is sobering: from January 2025 to March 2026, thirty African countries reported more than 46,000 confirmed cases and 214 deaths, with the Democratic Republic of Congo long the epicentre.

Health officials are quick to stress that the end of the emergency is not the end of the disease. The WHO and Africa CDC have updated their joint continental response plan, laying out steps to integrate mpox care into routine health services — vaccination, surveillance and treatment continuing as ordinary public-health work rather than crisis response. The lesson of past outbreaks is that declaring victory too completely invites resurgence.

And Africa's infectious-disease burdens allow no pause. In Angola, a cholera outbreak is accelerating, with cases rising 11.5 percent in a single week to 12,368, of which 473 have been fatal — a case fatality rate far above what functioning treatment access should permit. Meanwhile the DRC continues to battle the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record, with more than 500 deaths.

The mixed picture is the honest one: a hard-won win on mpox, a deadly emergency in Angola, and a reminder that for much of the continent, outbreak response is not an event but a permanent condition — one that chronically underfunded health systems are left to manage.