Mpox | Our World in Data Our World in Data Browse by topic Data Latest Resources About Subscribe Donate Mpox By Edouard Mathieu, Fiona Spooner, Saloni Dattani, Hannah Ritchie, and Max Roser Cite this workReuse this work Introduction Data Explorer Mpox is an infectious disease spread through close contact with contagious individuals or infected animals. Most people recover fully, but in some cases, it can lead to severe illness or death. Vaccination against smallpox offers some degree of protection against mpox. Smallpox was eradicated in 1980, so vaccination rates against it have dropped since then. This means the protection it provided against mpox has diminished, leading to a gradual increase in cases in West and Central Africa.1 In May 2022, a notable outbreak of mpox spread across the world. This global outbreak was primarily, but not exclusively, driven through transmission via sexual contact of men who have sex with men.2 The combination of public health campaigns, availability of vaccines, and actions by impacted communities led to fewer infections globally. Since 2023, an epidemic of a new variant of mpox, known as clade 1b, began in Central Africa. In August 2024, the WHO declared this new mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. However, a lack of local diagnostic infrastructure means suspected mpox cases are often not confirmed. We maintain a data explorer on this page, which lets you explore confirmed cases and deaths published by the World Health Organization and suspected cases reported by the Africa CDC. Related topics Pandemics Vaccination Causes of Death Explore our data on mpox Endnotes Simpson K, Heymann D, Brown CS, Edmunds WJ, Elsgaard J, Fine P, et al. Human monkeypox — After 40 years, an unintended consequence of smallpox eradication. Vaccine. 2020;38(33):5077–5081 Mitjà, O., Ogoina, D., Titanji, B. K., Galvan, C., Muyembe, J. J., Marks, M., & Orkin, C. M. (2023). Monkeypox. The Lancet, 401(10370), 60-74. Cite this work Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as: Edouard Mathieu, Fiona Spooner, Saloni Dattani, Hannah Ritchie, and Max Roser (2022) - “Mpox” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/mpox' [Online Resource] BibTeX citation @article{owid-mpox, author = {Edouard Mathieu and Fiona Spooner and Saloni Dattani and Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser}, title = {Mpox}, journal = {Our World in Data}, year = {2022}, note = {https://ourworldindata.org/mpox} } Reuse this work freely All visualizations, data, and articles produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited. The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution. All of our charts can be embedded in any site. Our World in Data is free and accessible for everyone. Help us do this work by making a donation. Donate now Our World in Data is a project of Global Change Data Lab, a nonprofit based in the UK (Reg. Charity No. 1186433). Our charts, articles, and data are licensed under CC BY, unless stated otherwise. The source code for our tools and software is made publicly available for transparency and educational reference under a custom license. Re-use requires permission. Third-party materials, including some charts and data, are subject to third-party licenses. See our FAQs for more details. Explore Topics Data Data Insights Resources Latest SDG Tracker Teaching with OWID About About us Organization Funding Team Jobs FAQs RSS Feeds Research & Writing Data Insights Follow us Privacy policy Cookie notice Legal disclaimer Grapher license Send feedback