For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the World Health Organization is poised to declare a different disease, monkeypox, to also be a public health emergency of international concern. Since early May 2022, cases of monkeypox—a disease endemic to parts of Africa—have been identified in more than thirty-seven countries where the disease is not normally found. More than three thousand confirmed and suspected cases have been reported. 

In this Council on Foreign Relations roundtable, Dr. Luciana L. Borio, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Dr. Anne Rimoin, Gordon-Levin endowed chair in infectious diseases and public health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, discuss the state of the international monkeypox outbreak, national and multilateral public health responses, prospects for control, access to countermeasures, and the potential implications of this outbreak.