By Uche Amunike
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has stated that according to their most recent update on Monkey Pox, Lagos and Edo States are the most affected in the recent scourge of the disease as they have recorded 21 new cases in just one week.
This announcement was made in a statement released in the NDDC official website which raised the figure of confirmed Monkey Pox cases in the country to 241.
According to facts presented by the agency, while providing guidelines on how to prevent the menace of Monkey Pox , Lagos state has recorded the highest brunt of the disease, having had 42 confirmed cases since the beginning of the year, 2022, which makes up 17.4% of the total burden of the disease in the country.
Part of the statement says: ‘Overall, since the re-emergence of monkeypox in September 2017 to August this year, a total of 1,116 suspected cases have been reported from 35 states’.
‘Of the 1,116 suspected cases, there have been 467 (41.8 per cent) confirmed (309 male, 158 female) from 32 states.’
The NCDC also stated that a total of 14 deaths have so far been recorded, with a fatality rate of 3% in 10 states out of the number of suspected cases from the month of September.
They are: ‘ Lagos – three, Edo – two, Imo – one, Cross River – one, FCT – one, Rivers – one, Ondo State – one, Delta – one, Akwa Ibom – one, Taraba – one and Kogi – one,” the NCDC stated.
According to the Update on Monkeypox (MPX) in Nigeria, published yesterday by NCDC, “100 new suspected cases were reported in Epi week 34, 2022 (August 22 to 28, 2022) from 21 states: Lagos (17), Abia (16), Imo (14), Delta (seven), Ondo (seven), Bayelsa (five), Gombe (five), Rivers (four), Benue (three), Ebonyi (three), Edo (three), Plateau (three), FCT (two), Katsina (two), Osun (two), Taraba (two), Anambra (one), Enugu (one), Kano (one), and Oyo (one).
Recall that the World Health Organization (WHO), stated on September 1, that over 50,000 Monkey Pox cases had been recorded globally, soon after it was declared a global health emergency in July.
A global emergency is that, which records WHO’s highest level of alert, like the last public health emergency being the COVID-19 pandemic.
Monkey Pox is a virus transmitted to human beings from animals. It has symptoms similar to those seen people seen in the past, in Small Pox patients, even though they are clinically less severe.
It is usually transmitted through contact between animals and human beings especially with the blood, body fluids, or lesions of infected animals. This could be spread by close contact and exposure to an infected persons respiratory droplets, bodily fluids or skin lesions.
According to the NCDC, Monkey Pox symptoms include fever and rash, which could be initially considered to be chickenpox or a sexually transmitted disease if it is seen in the genitalia of anus region. Another symptom of the disease is Swollen lymph nodes.
