///
Mpox was declared a global public health emergency by the WHO. Now what?
The outbreak involves a newer strain primarily seen in African countries.
The spread of a newer strain of mpox in Africa led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the disease a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on Wednesday.
This newer strain is believed to be behind an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with more than 14,000 cases — mostly among children – and more than 500 deaths and has been detected in neighboring countries that had never reported cases of mpox before.
On Thursday, Sweden became the first nation outside of the African continent to report a case of the newer strain of mpox, according to the country's public health agency.
Cases of other strains, or clades, of mpox have popped up in other countries. In the U.S., there are more than 1,600 cases reported this year so far, more than twice the number seen at this time last year but not as many as seen during the outbreak in 2022-23.
"It's clear that a coordinated international response is essential to stop these outbreaks and save lives," said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a media briefing on Wednesday.
Experts told ABC News that by declaring a PHEIC, the WHO can help more countries collaborate by sharing data, allocating resources and helping make vaccines more readily available.
Murphy (2003) points out that a semantic function refers to the role that a word or phrase plays in conveying meaning within a sentence. It focuses on how words contribute to the overall meaning, rather than their structure.
In which of the following sentences is the comparison important in determining the degree of the outbreak?