Another monkeypox case reported in Islamabad
Pakistan
A 50-year-old man who came to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia recently was tested positive for monkeypox.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) - Another monkeypox case has been reported in Pakistan on Monday, taking the number of confirmed cases in the country to five, Dunya News reported.
According to sources, a 50-year-old man who came to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia recently was tested positive for monkeypox. He was admitted to the isolation ward of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS)
The first case of monkey pox in the country was also reported in Islamabad on April 25. Since then, cases have been detected in Lahore and Karachi as well. Safety protocols are being enforced on airports across the country.
Mpox, also called monkeypox, is a rare disease similar to smallpox caused by a virus. It’s found mostly in areas of Africa, but has been seen in other regions of the world. It causes flu-like symptoms such as fever and chills, and a rash that can take weeks to clear. There’s no proven treatment for mpox, but it usually goes away on its own.
The disease mpox is caused by the monkeypox virus (commonly abbreviated as MPXV), an enveloped double-stranded DNA virus of the Orthopoxvirus genus in the Poxviridae family, which includes variola, cowpox, vaccinia and other viruses. The two genetic clades of the virus are clades I and II.
The monkeypox virus was discovered in Denmark (1958) in monkeys kept for research and the first reported human case of mpox was a nine-month-old boy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, 1970). Mpox can spread from person to person or occasionally from animals to people. Following eradication of smallpox in 1980 and the end of smallpox vaccination worldwide, mpox steadily emerged in central, east and west Africa. A global outbreak occurred in 2022–2023. The natural reservoir of the virus is unknown – various small mammals such as squirrels and monkeys are susceptible.
