The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for global concerted action to control a new mpox outbreak, announcing a response plan that will require at least $135 million over the next six months.
"Let me be clear: this new mpox outbreak can be controlled and can be stopped," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a speech to WHO member states on Friday, later posted on social media platform X.
"Responding to this complex outbreak requires a comprehensive and coordinated international response," he said.
Transmission is mainly centred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where there have been more than 16,000 suspected cases, including 575 deaths, this year alone.
The surge is being driven by two separate outbreaks of two strains of the mpox virus, or clades, in different parts of the country.
The rapid spread of a new offshoot, clade 1b, was the main reason behind his decision to declare mpox a global public health emergency on August 14.
A United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded on Tuesday that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had incited these acts.
Qatar and the United States are on the verge of finalising an enhanced defence cooperation agreement, top US diplomat Marco Rubio said on Tuesday, after Israel's attack on Hamas political leaders in Doha last week drew widespread condemnation.
Israel unleashed a long-threatened ground assault on Gaza City on Tuesday, declaring "Gaza is burning" as Palestinians there described the most intense bombardment they had faced in two years of war.
US President Donald Trump sued the New York Times, four of its reporters, and publisher Penguin Random House for at least $15 billion on Monday, claiming defamation and libel, and citing reputational damage, a Florida court filing showed.