Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi warned on Monday that Mpox could become “another challenge” to public health in Mozambique, stressing the strengthening of surveillance measures and disease prevention actions by the Ministry of Health.
“Compatriots, this could become another public health problem,” Mozambique’s head of state said during a public event in Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado province, referring to a new variant of the monkeypox virus (Mpox).
Filipe Nyusi also highlighted Mozambique’s ability to prevent the disease, recalling that during the outbreak recorded in 2022, the country recorded only one case in Maputo province in southern Mozambique.
Although no cases have been reported since that year, Mozambique’s president said on Monday that the Ministry of Health (Misau) is strengthening surveillance measures in all hospital units in the country, including strengthening and expanding laboratory capacity to test suspected cases.
Among the actions, the president said, is also updating the “preparedness and response plan,” as well as “therapeutic protocols” and risk communication efforts.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the smallpox outbreak in Africa a global health emergency, with cases confirmed among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new variant in circulation.
The organization called for a unified international response given the detection of a new variant of the virus in Europe (Sweden) a day after the first case was reported in Asia (Pakistan).
Half a million doses of one of two rapidly developed Mpox vaccines are currently available, according to the WHO, and another 2.5 million doses could be produced next year.
Formerly known as monkeypox, it is a viral disease that is transmitted from animals to humans, but is also spread through close physical contact with a person infected with the virus.
Mpox was first discovered in humans in 1970, in what is now the DR Congo (formerly Zaire), with the spread of the clade I subtype (of which the new variant is a mutation) since then largely confined to West and Central African countries, where patients are usually infected by animals.
In 2022, an outbreak of the clade II subtype spread to a hundred countries where the disease was not endemic, affecting mainly gay and bisexual men and causing about 140 deaths out of about 90,000 cases.
WHO declared a state of high alert in July 2022 in response to this global outbreak, but lifted it less than a year later, in May 2023.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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