London – Outbreaks of endemic diseases such as monkeypox and lassa fever are becoming more persistent and frequent, the World Health Organization's emergencies director, Dr Michael J. Ryan, warned on Wednesday. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said the monkeypox cases appears to be spreading from person to person in England.

As the climate change contributes to rapidly changing weather conditions like drought, animals and human are changing their food-seeking behaviour. As a result, diseases that typically circulate in animals are increasingly jumping into humans, Ryan said.

"Unfortunately, that ability to amplify that disease and move it on within our communities is increasing - so both disease emergence and disease amplification factors have increased" he added.

"We used to have three to five years between Ebola outbreaks at least, now it's lucky if we have three to five months," he added. "So, there's definitely ecological pressure in the system."

His commentary comes as cases of monkeypox continue to rise outside Africa, where the pathogen is endemic.

Monkeypox, a usually mild viral disease, which is endemic in west and central Africa, is understood to spread through close contact. Until early May, cases rarely cropped up outside Africa and were typically linked to travel to there.

"The current outbreak is the first time that the virus has been passed from person to person in England where travel links to an endemic country have not been identified," the agency said.

According to the UKHSA, the majority of cases in the United Kingdom - 132 - are in London.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization said it had so far received reports of more than 550 confirmed cases of the viral disease from 30 countries outside of Africa.
-Reuters/USN