Alert issued for Karachi hospitals over monkeypox spread

KARACHI: An infection control alert has been issued in hospitals across the metropolis following the emergence of monkeypox virus in the country.

The directives for both private and government-run hospitals follow the Federal Health Ministry's confirmation that mpox was diagnosed in at least one patient who had returned from a Gulf country.

It is to be noted that a new form of the virus has triggered global concern because it seems to spread more easily through routine close contact. A case of the new variant was confirmed on Thursday in Sweden and linked to a growing outbreak in Africa, the first sign of its spread outside the continent.

Mpox is a viral disease related to the now-eradicated smallpox virus and can spread through any close contact and through contaminated materials like sheets, clothing and needles, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

A spokesperson of the ministry said the sequencing of the confirmed case was underway, and that it would not be clear which variant of mpox the patient had until the process was complete.

Meanwhile, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health authorities confirmed one mpox case after withdrawing their previous statement that three mpox patients had been detected there this week on arrival from the United Arab Emirates.

Highlighting that the WHO has declared a global emergence over mpox spread, health experts have said that the disease can be transferred from animals to humans as well as from one person to another.

It is to be noted that last year Pakistan reported nine cases of mpox, all among travellers returning from the Middle East and other countries with one fatality of a patient in Islamabad, who was co-infected with HIV and mpox.

Underscoring the significance of maintaining hygiene, the experts have termed the N-95 mask essential to prevent the spread of mpox which can be diagnosed by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test — the same one used for the detection of COVID-19.

Although the experts say that the mpox vaccine does provide some protection against the disease, DOW University's Infectious disease specialist University Professor Dr Saeed Khan has said that the disease's vaccine is currently unavailable.

Risk and symptoms

Initial symptoms of the mpox include fever, chills, muscle pain, swelling of the glands, exhaustion, headache and muscle weakness.

They are often followed by a painful or itchy rash with raised lesions that scab over and resolve over a period of weeks.

The deadlier clade 1 has been endemic in the Congo Basin in central Africa for decades. The less severe clade 2 has become endemic in parts of West Africa.

The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed that while some outbreaks of clade I mpox have killed up to 10% of people who get sick, more recent outbreaks have had lower death rates.

The fatality rate for clade II is less than 0.2%. Meanwhile, those at risk of having more severe infections include infants, people with severely weakened immune systems and pregnant women.

Between January 2022 and June 2024, 208 deaths and more than 99,000 mpox cases were recorded across 116 countries, according to the WHO.

In June this year alone, 934 new cases were reported, with most cases coming from the African Region (61%), followed by the region of the Americas (19%) and the European region (11%).

The latest surge has been of the deadlier clade 1 and its new mutated variant.