Experts Warn: Africa could record more high risk diseases in 2025

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | THE INDEPENDENT | Officials at the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) have reported an increase in high-risk events, saying many countries on the continent are currently experiencing multiple outbreaks.

Speaking during the weekly press conference, Professor Yap Boum II, the Deputy Head of the Africa CDC Mpox Response, revealed that while they recorded seventy-two high-risk events in the entire 2024, they have so far recorded thirty-nine such events. Also, he said they had recorded a hundred other outbreaks of moderate risk by Thursday.

Boum says these trends show that the continent is likely to record more outbreaks in 2025 than they were in 2024, where it recorded a total of 219 high and moderate risk outbreaks.

Currently, among the outbreaks being experienced include cholera, measles, dengue and Mpox, which have so far affected twenty-three countries, with eighteen countries having an active outbreak.

Boum says countries like DRC are facing multiple outbreaks of Mpox, cholera and measles and that there is an urgent need to move toward more efficiency on how countries can mutualise the resources that are more and more limited to respond to the different outbreaks at the same time.

While Uganda has been recording a decrease in Mpox cases since late May and recently declared the end of the Ebola outbreak, statistics by the Ministry of Health show cases of Mpox are starting to increase once again. The country has recorded 233 confirmed cases of the disease this week, representing a sixty-six per cent increase from last week when the country tested 140 cases.

Officials at the Ministry of Health say the highest attack rate is currently in Mbarara, but with a resurgence being witnessed in Kampala, Masaka and Wakiso.

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