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Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

ABUJA, NIGERIA — The high inflation rate in Nigeria dropped slightly in August, but a decline in the value of the nairia and a continued increase in fuel prices are eroding the slight gains and threatening to reignite the inflationary trend. Michael Anthony, an engineer and father of four, still faces high costs despite the small drop in inflation, which fell from 33.40% in July to 32.15% in August. His household expenses remain steep, with no real relief in sight. "In the month of July, I bought a bag of rice at the rate of 65,000 naira, but ... three days ago, I bought a bag of rice for 95,000 naira,” he said. "If you want to buy anything, price has risen because of the price of fuel. I'm worried that inflation rate might rise again." At a market in a suburb of Abuja, food trader Blessing Ochuba is also struggling. With customers unable to buy in bulk, she’s cutting back her stock and adjusting prices to stay in business. Ochuba said patronage has been slow despite the reported dip in inflation rate. "People that normally buy in bags, they now buy like half or quarter ... because they can no longer afford to buy for now,” she said. “I used to buy like 10 bags of rice, but now I cannot afford to buy five. Honestly, I did not see the coming down, everything is going higher. “It's on the high side, and it is really affecting us." Despite lower inflation, Nigeria’s currency has weakened from 1,200 to 1,600 to the dollar, and gasoline prices have soared from 620 to nearly 1,000 naira per liter over the past three months. Development economist Hauwa Mustapha credited a government policy in which food imports were not subject to excise duty for 90 days for the slight inflation drop. "I think that helped a lot, and that also helped for them to boost the supply of food. ... It does not indicate a long-term recovery,” she said, adding that a lasting recovery will depend on government measures. "What the government can do to manage inflationary pressure for both short term and long term, I think for now, is to concentrate policy action in the area of food supply,” Mustapha said. “Thankfully, we are approaching the harvest season. Typically, in Nigeria, we also know that we experience a lot of post-harvest loss. This is ... the time for the country to manage the harvest, particularly control [and] minimize post-harvest losses, so that we can keep the food supply steady." Experts say the government’s next steps will determine whether this inflation dip signals a recovery or just temporary relief.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA/BANGKOK — A prominent Southeast Asian rights group said Friday that Myanmar’s ruling State Administration Council reportedly intends to execute five democracy activists Tuesday following their May 2023 conviction and sentencing for alleged involvement in a deadly 2021 shooting on a train in Yangon. The ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights said it was deeply troubled after receiving a report from what it called a reliable source about the pending executions, which were ordered when a civilian court delivered a verdict in a closed-door hearing held in Insein Prison. It said Zaryaw Phyo, 32; San Min Aung, 24; Kyaw Win Soe 33; Kaung Pyae Sone Oo, 27; and Myat Phyo Pwint, age unknown, were charged with murder and illegal weapons possession under several statutes, including the 1949 Arms Act and a 2014 counterterrorism law. “The use of capital punishment as a tool to suppress dissent is unacceptable and must be condemned in the strongest terms,” Wong Chen, a Malaysian member of the parliamentarians group’s board, said in the group’s statement. The organization demanded the State Administration Council halt the executions and immediately release the five activists. The SAC is the official name of the military government formed in February 2021 when the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted by a coup d’etat, tipping the country into civil war. It said such actions represented a grievous infringement of human rights and a blatant disregard for international legal standards. “We call upon the SAC to immediately release them and ensure that, pending their release, the detention conditions comply with international standards, including access to legal representation, medical care and contact with their family,” said Mercy Chriesty Barends, the chairperson of the parliamentarians group. Lawyers, families of the condemned and prison authorities contacted by VOA could not confirm whether the executions were scheduled to proceed Tuesday; however, one prison authority noted their bodies and necks had been measured regularly. Myanmar’s ruling military hanged four democracy activists in July 2022 after the SAC accused them of carrying out “terror acts.” They were the first people to be executed in Myanmar in more than 40 years, leading to widespread international condemnation. Shortly after the executions, the G7 leading economies called on the ruling military to "refrain from further arbitrary executions" and to free all political prisoners, warning the absence of fair trials showed the junta’s contempt for the democratic aspirations of the people of Myanmar. The parliamentarians group said it was “particularly disconcerting” that the five executions would be carried out under the first death sentences ordered by a civilian judiciary — rather than a military tribunal — since the coup, signaling a disturbing shift in judicial proceedings in Myanmar. Jason Tower, country director for the Burma Program at the United States Institute of Peace, said the death sentences marked a hardening of attitudes by the junta, which has suffered a litany of losses on the battlefield since anti-regime forces launched an offensive last October. “This is very concerning, and there’s not enough action on this internationally. The junta is out of control — atrocities are everywhere,” he told VOA, adding the broader international community had not done enough to counter an “illegitimate regime that is perpetrating horrific violence.” He also said a recent shift in China’s posture toward Myanmar’s military regime had sent a signal that the junta can get away with mass atrocities and executing human rights defenders and political opponents without consequences. “China has blatantly ignored a dramatic increase in junta airstrikes targeting civilians, IDP camps, schools and hospitals, moving forward with inviting senior junta officials to Chinese-led multilateral platforms,” he said. Those platforms include the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Xiangshan Forum and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation. “Participants in these platforms have failed to push back, and there are worrying signs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations could be tilting toward closer relations with the military regime despite the dramatic increase in atrocities and war crimes,” Tower said.

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BANGKOK — Amid a reported surge in cross-border repression across Southeast Asia, rights advocates say Thailand is making promising but very slow progress rolling out an asylum program meant to protect the most vulnerable refugees. They say many who might be eligible for the program are reluctant to apply for fear of exposing themselves to the police and that coming forward could backfire. Thailand does not officially recognize refugees and deems anyone in the country without a valid visa or passport an illegal migrant. Last September, though, the government introduced a National Screening Mechanism to give "protected persons status" to those from other countries who can prove they are "unable or unwilling" to return home "due to a well-founded fear of persecution." Neither the Royal Thai Police – whose Immigration Bureau is leading the program  – nor the National Security Council or Foreign Affairs Ministry, which both participate, replied to VOA’s repeated requests for comment on the NSM, which took effect September 22 of last year. At a meeting with aid groups last week, though, immigration officials said fewer than 10 people, including adults and their children, have been fully vetted and granted asylum under the program to date, participants from the aid groups told VOA. They say officials said one applicant had been rejected and that about 200 were still having their claims assessed. "In terms of implementation, it’s not proportionate yet with the overall population of asylum seekers and refugees in Thailand," said Krittaporn Semsantad, program director for Thailand’s Peace Rights Foundation, after attending last week’s meeting. "I’d say they’re … trying to do their best," she said of the government. "However, there’s a lot of limitation." The United Nations estimates some 5,000 asylum seekers are living in Thailand, though rights groups say the true number is likely higher. Human Rights Watch reported in May that Thailand had made itself increasingly dangerous for asylum seekers over the past decade through what rights groups claim is an arrangement with its neighbors to forcibly return each other’s dissidents, regardless of potential persecution, including arrest, torture and death. In recent years, Thailand has arrested and forced dozens of dissidents and members of persecuted ethnic minorities back to their home countries, including China. A rights activist from Vietnam, Y Quynh Bdap, was arrested in Bangkok in June and is now on trial for possible extradition back to Vietnam, where he is wanted for fomenting a deadly riot he says he had nothing to do with. Once accepted into Thailand’s new asylum program, refugees should be safe from a forced return home, but rights advocates say the NSM is moving far too slowly to cope with the need. They say the screening commission is struggling to verify the biographies of applicants, has too few interpreters to bridge language barriers, and that many potential applicants still don’t know the program even exists. Those who do, they add, can be put off by having to be formally charged with an immigration offense to go through the process. They say many also don’t trust the government to vet them fairly and fear that if their applications are rejected they could end up back in the countries they fled. "They’re afraid that if they apply for NSM, they reveal themselves to the government, and if they [do] not meet the criteria of the NSM they will need to [be] deport[ed] back to their … home country," said Tanyakorn Thippayapokin, policy advocacy coordinator for Asylum Access Thailand, who also attended last week’s meeting. Advocates say as well that the eligibility rules are too narrow by barring legal migrant workers — who may also be asylum seekers who need protection — from applying, and that the power the rules give the government to reject applicants over unspecified national security risks are too broad. By not having to explain the security risks, some worry, the government may turn worthy applicants down to either build or maintain good relations with neighboring countries. Opposition lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang, who chairs the House of Representatives subcommittee on sustainable solutions for migrants in the country illegally, cited the case of the four dozen ethnic Uyghurs from China who Thailand has been holding in detention without charges since arresting them for illegal entry over a decade ago. "When they [use] the justification of the national security concern, it can [mean] everything in this world," said Kannavee, who worked for the United Nations refugee agency for over a dozen years. "For example, the Uyghurs. If they said it is a national security concern, we cannot put the 48 cases of the Uyghur refugees who’ve been put in the immigration detention center [through] the NSM, it can be like that," he said. Krittaporn said she was told by immigration officials that the detained Uyghurs were eligible for the NSM, but she added that nongovernment groups have not been able to meet with them to check whether they have been given the chance to apply. Advocates suggest the government do more to inform asylum seekers and refugees about the program, hire more interpreters, and scale back the share of security agency officials on the screening commission. Some suggest it also scrap the need for applicants to be formally charged. As it is now, the program seems designed more for finding reasons to turn down applicants than to approve them, said Pornsuk Koetsawang, founder of Friends Without Borders, another local refugee aid group. "The security agencies work for Thailand’s national security, not for protection of refugees, and they [refugees] worry that Thai security agencies … think that refugees are a threat," she said. "That’s the thing that has been happening for the past few decades." Kannavee said transferring primary responsibility for the program from the police to the Interior Ministry would help give it a more humanitarian focus.  He says the program may yet collapse from all its faults, though, and has been working on legislation that would give Thailand an entirely new refugee program. On the whole, though, most advocates say the NSM is at least a modest step in the right direction for Thailand and may still be able to spare some refugees from arrest and a forced return to the countries they have fled. Once vetted and approved, said Tanyakorn, "they’re here legally at least and with the protection of the government authorities." 

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CAIRO — This week saw a dizzying escalation in the 11-month conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. First came two days of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah — deadly attacks pinned on Israel that also maimed civilians around Lebanon. Hezbollah's leader vowed to retaliate and, on Friday, the militant group launched dozens of rockets into northern Israel. Later in the day, Israel said it killed the commander of Hezbollah’s most elite unit with a strike in Beirut that left at least 14 dead. Many fear the events are the prelude to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite group that is Lebanon’s most powerful armed force. A war threatens to bring devastation in Lebanon, heavy missile fire into Israeli cities and further destabilization to a region already shaken by the Gaza war. During 11 months of exchanges of fire over the Lebanese-Israeli border, both sides have repeatedly pulled back when the spiral of reprisals appeared on the verge of going out of control, under heavy pressure from the U.S. and its allies. But in recent weeks, Israeli leaders have warned of a possible bigger military operation with the goal of stopping attacks from Lebanon to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the fighting to return to homes near the border. Here are some things to know about the situation: What were the latest strikes? An Israeli airstrike Friday brought down a high-rise building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Shi’ite-majority area known as Dahiyeh where Hezbollah has a strong presence. At least 14 people were killed and more than 60 wounded, the deadliest Israeli strike in the Lebanese capital since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The Israeli military said the strike killed Ibrahim Akil, the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, as well as other top leaders of the unit. Hezbollah later confirmed Akil was killed, a heavy blow to Hezbollah’s most effective fighters. Israel said Akil led the group’s campaign of rocket, drone and other fire into northern Israel. The strike came after the shock of the electronic device bombings, in which hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated on Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 37 people were killed, including two children, and some 3,000 wounded. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement. The casualties included some fighters from the group, but many of the wounded were civilians connected to Hezbollah’s social branches. Analysts say the attack has little effect on Hezbollah’s manpower, but could disrupt its communications and force it to take tighter security measures. What is the situation on the border? Hezbollah fired 140 rockets into northern Israel on Friday, saying it was targeting military sites in retaliation for overnight Israeli strikes into southern Lebanon. There was no immediate report of casualties. It was a continuation of the near daily drumbeat of exchanges over the border since the Gaza war began in October. The exchanges have killed some 600 people in Lebanon – mostly fighters but including around 100 civilians — and some 50 soldiers and civilians in Israel. It has also forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate homes near the border in both Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has promised retaliation for the electronic device bombings, raising fears of an escalation from the group. But Hezbollah has also proved wary of further stoking the crisis – it has not carried out its vows of revenge from Israel’s killing of a top commander, Fouad Shukur, in July. Hezbollah says its attacks against Israel are in support of Hamas. This week, Nasrallah said the barrages won’t end – and Israelis won’t be able to return to homes in the north – until Israel’s campaign in Gaza ends. As fighting in Gaza has slowed, Israel has fortified forces along the border with Lebanon, including the arrival this week of a powerful army division that took part in some of the heaviest fighting in Gaza. It is believed to include thousands of troops, including paratrooper infantry units and artillery and elite commando forces specially trained for operations behind enemy lines. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant this week declared the start of a "new phase" of the war as Israel turns its focus toward Hezbollah. "The center of gravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces," he said. What is Israel planning? Israeli officials say they have not yet made an official decision to expand military operations against Hezbollah – and have not said publicly what those operations might be. This week, the head of Israel’s Northern Command was quoted in local media as advocating for a ground invasion of Lebanon. A U.N.-brokered truce to their 2006 war called on Hezbollah to pull back 29 kilometers from the border, but it has refused to, accusing Israel of also failing to carry out some provisions. Israel is now demanding Hezbollah withdraw eight to 10 kilometers from the border – the range of Hezbollah’s anti-tank guided missiles. Israel and Hezbollah’s 2006 war was a devastating monthlong fight triggered when Hezbollah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. In that war, Israel heavily bombarded southern Lebanon and Beirut and sent a ground invasion into the south. The strategy, later explained by Israeli commanders, was to inflict the maximum damage possible in towns and neighborhoods where Hezbollah operated to deter them from launching attacks. It became known as the "Dahiyeh Doctrine," named after Beirut suburbs where large areas were levelled during the war. But Israel could have a more ambitious and controversial goal this time: to seize a buffer zone in south Lebanon to push back Hezbollah fighters from the border. A fight to hold territory threatens a longer, even more destructive and destabilizing war – recalling Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon. What would be the impact of a full-blown war? The fear is that it could turn out even worse than the 2006 war, which was traumatic enough for both sides to serve as a deterrent ever since. The 2006 fighting killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and an estimated 1,100 Lebanese civilians and left large swaths of the south and even parts of Beirut in ruins. More than 120 Israeli soldiers were killed and hundreds wounded. Hezbollah missile fire on Israeli cities brought the war to the public, killing dozens of civilians. Now, Israel estimates that Hezbollah possesses some 150,000 rockets and missiles, some of which are precision-guided, putting the entire country within range of Hezbollah fire. Israel has beefed up air defenses, but it is unclear whether it can defend against the intense barrages expected in a new war. Israel has vowed it could turn all of southern Lebanon into a battle zone, saying Hezbollah has embedded rockets, weapons and forces along the border. And in the heightened rhetoric of the past months, Israeli politicians have spoken of inflicting the same damage in Lebanon that the military has wreaked in Gaza.

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Kyiv, Ukraine — An overnight Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed a 12-year-old boy and two elderly women, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said Saturday. "Again, a terrifying enemy attack on Kryvyi Rih. In the middle of the night, when the city slept," Lysak wrote on Telegram. He said three more people were injured and were taken to a hospital with injuries of medium severity. The two women killed by the attack were 75 and 79 years old. Lysak also said two buildings were destroyed and 20 more damaged. Kryvyi Rih, a major steel-producing city, is near Russian-occupied territory. It is regularly hit by air strikes.

NEW YORK — They may be Tigrinya speakers fleeing the authoritarian Eritrean government's indefinite military service policy. Or Rohingya people escaping ethnic violence in Myanmar. But refugees navigating resettlement often face a shared hurdle: poor machine translations and a short supply of interpreters knowledgeable in their less-serviced languages. Tarjimly, a Google-backed nonprofit described as "Uber for translators," aims to help asylum seekers clear that hurdle. Through a new artificial intelligence partnership, Tarjimly trains outside large language models while allowing its volunteers to respond more urgently to needs for translators. It's a feedback loop where humans teach the nuances of each language to the machines by sharing data from one-on-one calls and correcting automated translations. And it's this uniquely human realm of language that Tarjimly co-founder Atif Javed believes exemplifies the ever-tricky balance between individuals' ingenuity and technological advancement. He says it's the needed personal touch that shows why AI's rapid development shouldn't generally stoke widespread fears. Languages popular in the Global South — such as the Dari and Pashto commonly spoken in Afghanistan, home to one of the world's largest protracted refugee crises — have the worst quality coverage, according to Javed. He feels well positioned to supplement the internet's English-dominated information troves that train services like Google Translate with his mobile app's more diverse data sets. Tarjimly connects refugees with on-demand interpreters, who can communicate during meetings with social workers, immigration officials and doctors, and records the encounters for AI training. To comply with patient privacy protections, Tarjimly anonymizes the conversations on its app. Javed said the nonprofit also has on option for "no record" sessions where none of the data is stored for alternative uses. Many of its 60,000 volunteers are multilingual refugees themselves who more intimately understand not only their counterpart's native tongue but also the crisis that brought them there, according to Javed. Among them is Roza Tesfazion, a 26-year-old Eritrean refugee who works professionally as an interpreter for the United Kingdom's government. Fluent in Amharic and Tigrinya, she studied English and Swahili to help her immigrant family overcome language barriers when they first moved to Kenya. Tesfazion said she translates at no cost because she knows "how emotional it is" for the people on the other side of her sessions. "You have to have that touch of human emotions to it," she said. Tarjimly's founders say their mission's sensitive nature lends itself to nonprofit status more than a corporate structure. Users arrive in very vulnerable positions, and the nonprofit works with established humanitarian groups including Catholic Charities, the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations' International Organization for Migration. The work requires a level of trust that would have been difficult to earn in a "for-profit, competitive world," according to Javed. "The underlying engine of our success is the community we've built." That community, however, also has room for artificial intelligence. A $1.3 million grant from Google.org has enabled a "First Pass" tool that gives an instantly generated translation for human volunteers to revise. A new information hub will open up its language data for partners, including Google, in early 2025. But refining a more diverse library of languages will require conversational data at a scale much broader than Tarjimly can likely provide on its own, according to Data & Society researcher Ranjit Singh. Singh, who studies the social implications of automation and inclusive digital solutions, said translation services will always need a "real person in the middle." "There is one part of it which is translation and another part of it which is just trying to understand somebody's life situation," he said. "Technologies help us do some of this work. But at the same time, it's also fairly social." Tarjimly was inspired by Javed's time volunteering with Arabic speakers at refugee camps in Greece and Turkey after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and working in Silicon Valley. A Muslim American whose family immigrated to the United States in 2001, Javed said he was reminded of his own childhood translating for his refugee grandmother. His lived experience is one reason why Elevate Prize Foundation CEO Carolina Garcìa Jayaram said her organization awarded $300,000 last year to Tarjimly. That "proximate leadership" helps nonprofits better understand developments like artificial intelligence that "can be both cause for excitement and trepidation," Jayaram said. The risk-averse philanthropic sector may be slow to catch up with disruptive new technologies, she noted, but shouldn't ignore their positive applications. "It's a great example of how not to get stuck in that bogeyman complex about AI," she said. "To go to leaders who are closest to those issues and say, 'How would AI unlock the possibilities and opportunities for your organization?'" 

KAVUMU, Congo — Health authorities have struggled to contain outbreaks of mpox in Congo, a huge central African country where a myriad of existing problems makes stemming the spread particularly hard. Last month, the World Health Organization declared the outbreaks in Congo and about a dozen other African countries a global health emergency. And in Congo, scientists have identified a new strain of mpox that may spread more easily. It has reached areas where conflict and the displacement of a large number of people have already put health services under pressure. Overall, Congo has more than 21,000 of the 25,093 confirmed and suspected mpox cases in Africa this year, according to WHO's most recent count. Has Congo seen cases of mpox before? Yes, Congo is one of the African countries where mpox has been endemic for decades. Mpox, once known as monkeypox, comes from the same family of viruses as smallpox but causes milder symptoms such as fever. People with more serious cases can develop skin lesions. More than 720 people in Africa have died in the latest outbreaks, mostly in Congo. Mpox is a zoonotic disease, meaning it can spread to humans from infected animals. In the global mpox outbreak of 2022, the virus spread between people primarily through sex and close physical contact. What changed in Congo? In September 2023, mpox spread to Congo's eastern province of South Kivu; it had previously been seen in the center and far west. Scientists then identified a new form of mpox in South Kivu that may be more infectious. The WHO said that from the outbreak in South Kivu, the virus spread among people elsewhere in the country, arriving in neighboring province North Kivu. Those two provinces — some 2,000 kilometers from the capital, Kinshasa — face escalating violence, a humanitarian crisis and other issues. What are the problems in eastern Congo? More than 120 armed groups have been fighting each other and the Congolese army for years in the eastern part of the country over the control of minerals. That has forced millions of people fleeing violence into refugee camps or nearby towns. That means mpox is hitting already-stretched health facilities. Dr. Musole Mulambamunva Robert, medical director of the Kavumu hospital in eastern Congo, said it is "truly a challenge" — sometimes treating as many as four times the facility's capacity for patients. With more than 6 million displaced people in the east, authorities and aid agencies were already struggling to provide food and healthcare, while fighting other diseases such as cholera. Many people have no access to soap, clean water or other basics. Some eastern Congo communities are out of reach of health clinics — roads are unreliable, and hourslong risky boat trips are sometimes the only means of transport, said Mercy Muthee Lake of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent. People can be more susceptible to severe mpox cases because of malnutrition and undiagnosed HIV, she said. She also said health workers in eastern Congo have requested more mpox training as medications to treat fever and ease pain run out. Health authorities "are up against it because it's such a complex area," said Chris Beyrer, of Duke University's Global Health Institute. What about vaccines? Africa has no capacity to produce mpox vaccines. Around 250,000 doses have arrived in Congo from the European Union and the United States, and more are expected. Congolese authorities say they need around 3 million vaccines. It will likely be weeks before any vaccines reach people in eastern Congo. For now, the vaccine is approved only for adults. There's limited evidence of how it works in children. Vaccines are desperately needed, but they're just "an additional tool," said Emmanuel Lampaert, the Congo representative for Doctors Without Borders. The key, Lampaert said, is still identifying cases, isolating patients, and executing grassroots health and education campaigns. Local conditions make that trying — Lampaert noted it's almost impossible to isolate cases among poor, displaced people. "Families with six to eight children are living in a hut, which is maybe the space of the bed we are sleeping in," he said. "So, this is the reality." Why are critics blasting the mpox response? Unlike the millions of dollars that poured into Congo for Ebola and COVID aid, the response to mpox has been sluggish, many critics say. Health experts say the sharp contrast is due to a lack of both funds and international interest. "Ebola is the most dangerous virus in the world, and COVID wiped out the world economy," said professor Ali Bulabula, who works on infectious diseases in the medical department at Congo's University of Kindu. "While mpox is a public health emergency of international concern, there is a lack of in-depth research and interest in the virus, as it's still seen as a tropical disease, localized to Africa with no major impact on Western economies."