The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared monkeypox to be a global health emergency. There have been over 16,000 reported cases in 75 countries. This is the second time in two years that the WHO has taken the significant step of declaring a global emergency - a designation currently used to describe only two other diseases, Covid-19 and polio.

The WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, overruled a panel of advisors who could not come to a consensus and declared a “public health emergency of international concern.” He told reporters that “we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria.”

The declaration by the WHO indicates a public health risk that requires a coordinated international response. It can lead member countries to invest significant resources into controlling an outbreak, draw more funding, and encourage countries to share vaccines, treatments and other key resources to help contain the outbreak.

Monkeypox has been a concern in some African countries for years. But in recent weeks it has spread rapidly across the globe. There is approximately five times the number of cases than when WHO advisers met in June. They decided not to recommend an emergency declaration then in part because the virus had not moved out of the primary risk group, men who have sex with men, to affect pregnant women, children or older adults, who are at greater risk of severe illness if infected.

Members of the LGBTQ+ community have been disproportionately affected by monkeypox. While anyone can get the virus, it is predominantly spreading among gay and bisexual men. This doesn’t mean it is sexually transmitted, but officials say it shows prolonged skin-to-skin contact is one of the major ways monkeypox is now spreading. Many are angered that it has not received the attention it deserves, as happened in the early days of the HIV epidemic.

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