(Bloomberg) -- Burundi’s prime minister this week started a national campaign to stop the spread of mpox after a contagious subvariant of the virus spilled across its porous border with the Democratic Republic of Congo where hundreds of people including children have died.
Gervais Ndirakobuca told citizens to stop shaking hands and touching each other when they greet and said that public gathering places, such as churches and schools, must make provision for hand washing or sanitizing. Those with symptoms of the disease, which can cause raised lesions as well as fever and muscle aches, must be immediately taken to the hospital, he said.
“We must face it and win against it,” Ndirakobuca said, while trying to allay concern by saying that disease was less dangerous than Covid-19, which shut down economies and killed millions of people in 2020 and 2021.
Burundi is ill-equipped to deal with a major disease outbreak. The landlocked east African country is the world’s poorest, World Bank data shows. It allocated 337.4 billion Burundi francs ($118 million) to health in 2023-2024, representing 8.6% of the national budget, according to Unicef. As many as 55.8% of the country’s children under 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition, the UN agency said.
A surge in cases of the disease, which has been found in more than half of the country’s regions has been attributed by the World Health Organization to the clade Ib subvariant of the virus, which, unlike earlier versions, seems to spread more easily through close contact including sex and is affecting children whose immune systems are weaker.
At least 331 people have been diagnosed with the disease in recent weeks with 54% of those being children under the age of 15, according to the country’s health ministry. That compares with about 20,463 cases detected, caused by all varieties of the virus, and 635 deaths in Congo.
In Burundi, where a high number of cases are among children younger than 5, the disease is being transmitted from breastfeeding mothers or when babies leave the maternity ward and come into contact with other family members, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director General Jean Kaseya said in a briefing Friday.
The spread in Burundi “is a major issue because we really don’t know what will happen next,” he said.
The government is providing clean water to regions without easy access to help prevent the spread and the Red Cross on Thursday began door-to-door visits in Bujumbura, the biggest city, to raise awareness about the disease and to distribute washing equipment to churches, markets and schools.
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--With assistance from Janice Kew.
(Updates with comments from Africa CDC in seventh paragraph)
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