A total of 12,569 suspected mpox cases, including 581 deaths, were recorded from Jan. 1 through Nov. 12 this year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday.
"The cases were reported in 156 health zones in 22 out of 26 provinces of the country," the WHO said in a statement.
It noted this is the highest number of annual cases ever reported in the country, with new cases registered in geographic areas that had previously not reported mpox, including the capital Kinshasa, Lualaba, and South Kivu.
The cases with travel history to the endemic provinces were blamed for driving chains of human-to-human transmission in non-affected provinces.
Some 11 of the 26 provinces of the DR Congo are identified as endemic for mpox.
In 2022, the WHO declared mpox disease a public health emergency of international concern following a global spread.
The U.S., Brazil, Spain, France, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and the UK reported the most cases during the global outbreak.
But in May this year, after nearly a year of the disease spreading, the WHO declared that mpox no longer constituted a global health emergency due to "sharply falling case numbers worldwide."
Mpox is an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV).
The virus, originally known as monkeypox, spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids and causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the skin.
