KINSHASA: The Democratic Republic of the Congo has declared an end to the mpox outbreak that had remained under national emergency management for about two years, with Health Minister Roger Kamba saying the epidemic no longer met the threshold for that status. The announcement marks a major public health milestone for a country that carried the heaviest burden during the recent surge in Africa, as authorities said the response would now shift from emergency footing to sustained surveillance and management within the health system.
Kamba said the virus had not been eradicated and warned that mpox remains present in the country, but he said transmission had dropped sharply from around 2,400 cases a week at the start of 2025 to about 170 cases now. The government had kept mpox under national emergency status through March 2026 even after broader international alerts were lifted, saying it wanted to avoid a resurgence while preparing a transition from crisis response to longer term disease control.
Over the course of the outbreak, the country recorded more than 161,000 suspected cases and about 37,000 laboratory confirmed infections, according to figures cited by health authorities and regional disease surveillance bodies. The reported toll reached 2,286 suspected deaths, although only 127 were confirmed through laboratory testing. The scale of the epidemic made Congo the center of the regional response and underscored the pressure it placed on testing, treatment access, vaccination efforts and disease surveillance across the national health system.
Regional emergency timeline
The outbreak in Congo also drove broader international action as mpox spread beyond its traditional endemic pattern. In August 2024, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared mpox a public health emergency of continental security, and the World Health Organization declared a global public health emergency the next day. Those alerts were later lifted, with WHO ending its emergency designation on Sept. 5, 2025, and Africa CDC lifting its continental emergency status on Jan. 22, 2026, after cases and deaths declined in the most affected areas.
Congo nevertheless chose to keep its own emergency measures in place for several more weeks, reflecting its central role in the outbreak and the continued presence of cases in several provinces. Health officials said the next phase would focus on maintaining detection and response capacity rather than dismantling the system built during the crisis. The minister also said the mpox vaccine used during the outbreak response would not yet be folded into the country’s routine immunization schedule, even as monitoring continues nationwide.
Surveillance remains in place
The response mobilized health workers, laboratories, emergency operations teams and technical partners across multiple provinces as authorities tried to contain transmission and expand care. Vaccination campaigns were rolled out in affected areas, and officials said more than 1.55 million people had been vaccinated by early February. Authorities have continued to stress that surveillance must remain active because mpox is still endemic in Congo, meaning infections can still appear even after the end of an emergency phase and local outbreaks still require rapid detection.
Mpox, a viral disease that can cause fever, rash and painful skin lesions, had already drawn global attention during multinational outbreaks in 2022, but Congo’s recent epidemic underscored the persistence of the virus in central Africa. By declaring the national outbreak over, the government signaled that the country has moved out of crisis mode while keeping public health controls in place. Authorities said surveillance and response measures would continue as the country enters a longer term phase of mpox management. – By Content Syndication Services.