By Martina Amelia
Accounting for half of the suspected cases, children are bearing the brunt of the mpox outbreak in Guinea-Bissau, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says.
In the country’s first-ever outbreak of the viral disease, half of the 46 suspected mpox cases recorded in Guinea-Bissau are children, including 16 under the age of four.
Sandra Martins, UNICEF Deputy Representative, cautioned that gaps in surveillance and the upcoming reopening of schools in September could widen the disease’s reach among the country’s most vulnerable population.
“With early detection, care, and prevention, mpox can be managed and its spread reduced,” Martins said, urging families to seek immediate care if a child or relative develops a rash, fever, swollen lymph nodes or other symptoms.
Newborns and young children face a higher risk of developing severe mpox than adults, and while most cases resolve on their own, doctors point to the 2022 international outbreak when many of the fatalities involved children or people with underlying health conditions as a cautionary precedent.
Health officials in Guinea-Bissau fear that when classrooms reopen next month, increased close contact among children will create fresh opportunities for the virus to spread.
The outbreak, declared by the government on 4 July, has so far produced seven confirmed cases among adults and no deaths, according to Guinea-Bissau’s Ministry of Health.
Mpox, a viral illness in the same family as smallpox, spreads primarily through skin-to-skin contact with lesions, but also through contaminated clothing, bedding and eating utensils everyday items that make households and schools potential transmission points. Symptoms typically include a distinctive rash alongside fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes, muscle aches and fatigue.
UNICEF says it is now working alongside Guinea-Bissau’s government on surveillance, contact tracing, infection prevention, water and sanitation support, and community outreach campaigns, but the agency says it needs more than $150,000 in flexible emergency funding to sustain the response and reach affected families.
Guinea-Bissau’s outbreak is a small piece of a much larger continental picture. Mpox has circulated in West and Central Africa for decades, historically linked to contact with infected animals in forested regions, but the disease has evolved into a sustained, human-to-human epidemic over the past two years.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in August 2024 after a new, more severe strain clade Ib emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and spread to neighbouring countries. Since then, the outbreak has spread across dozens of African nations.
WHO situation reports show that from January 2025 through mid-March 2026, 30 African countries logged more than 46,000 confirmed mpox cases. As recently as this spring, 16 African countries were still reporting active transmission every six weeks, with Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Kenya and Burundi among the hardest hit.
While case counts across the continent have been on a downward trend since a peak in mid-2025, WHO has cautioned that the true scale of transmission may be underestimated in places where surveillance has been scaled back or diverted toward competing health emergencies.
Unlike the 2022 global mpox wave, which was concentrated among adults with multiple sexual partners, including men who have sex with men, health authorities stress that mpox in the current African outbreaks is spreading through a wider range of everyday close-contact routes, putting children and households squarely at risk.
There is no mpox-specific cure, so treatment centers on supportive care: managing pain and fever, ensuring proper nutrition and hydration, caring for the skin to prevent secondary infections, and treating co-infections such as HIV where present, according to WHO guidance.
Antiviral drugs such as tecovirimat have been used under emergency authorization for severe cases, though clinical trial data from Central Africa have raised questions about their effectiveness against the clade I strain circulating on the continent.
Vaccination remains the primary tool for prevention. WHO recommends two vaccines the non-replicating MVA-BN vaccine (marketed as Jynneos, Imvamune or Imvanex) and the LC16m8 vaccine for people at high risk of exposure, including close contacts of confirmed cases and, in outbreak settings, healthcare workers and household members.
Beyond vaccines, WHO’s core prevention advice centers on breaking chains of transmission at the household and community level: avoiding skin-to-skin contact with anyone showing a rash or lesions and isolating infected individuals at home where possible until lesions have fully crusted and healed.
Others include not sharing clothing, bedding, towels or eating utensils with an infected person, and disinfecting any shared items, practicing regular handwashing and seeking medical care promptly at the first sign of symptoms, rather than waiting.
Health authorities and agencies including UNICEF also emphasize reducing stigma around the disease, noting that fear of social exclusion can discourage families from seeking care early a delay that can allow the virus to spread further before it is contained.
For Guinea-Bissau, the coming weeks are seen as pivotal. With school reopening in September and critical gaps still present in the country’s ability to trace contacts and test samples, UNICEF and government health officials are racing to close those gaps before the outbreak — currently described as “seemingly minor” — has a chance to grow.
