The Department of Health Departmental Spokesperson Foster Mohale has on Monday said the department is in support of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) strategy to form a committee of Mpox to curb the disease as South Africa reports two more laboratory cases.
The cases of mpox were recorded in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal bringing the number of laboratory confirmed cases to 24 as the department was on the verge to declare an outbreak over.
Common symptoms of mpox are a skin rash or mucosal lesions which can last 2–4 weeks accompanied by fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, low energy, and swollen lymph nodes.
Mpox can be transmitted to humans through physical contact with someone who is infectious, with contaminated materials, or with infected animals.
Mohale has said the WHO always try to be as proactive as possible as we have learnt a lesson during Covid-19 that “we need to intensify our response and preparedness activities once we have declared the outbreak of a disease without wasting time.
Mohale explained that there are however different strains reported in different countries and explained that South African strain is luck as we don’t have a deadlier strain for now.
However he warned that South Africans must not lower their guard as the virus mutates.
The department calls for ongoing public vigilance against despite the bfact that the recent cases come 26 days since the last cases of mpox were reported in South Africa.
Case 23 is a 36-year-old man from KwaZulu-Natal who was admitted at local public health facility in Durban late in July after he experienced mpox-like rash and along with fatigue, muscle pain and rigor. The patient has no international travel history.
Case 24 is a 20-year-old man from Gauteng who was seen at a private health facility in Johannesburg on Friday, 2 August. The case presented with typical mpox lesions. He confirmed that he has international travel history to Peru in South America. It is uncertain if exposure occurred in Peru or South Africa.
Reporting on the success rate in the country in treating mpox, Mohale said on the first 22 cases the country dealt with, only three people lost their lives. 19 of them have fully recovered.
Mohale said South Africa is doing well as a country working with the orgaisations like the WHO and other partner organisations in the country.
He highlighted that there is still a need to intensify health awareness in-order to empower citizens with the correct message so that they will be able to make informed choice.
“Prevention is better than cure. We can do more if we intensify health. We also like to thank the media for giving us airtime ino-order to educate our citizens with health education to make well informed choices”.
According to the WHO multi-country mpox outbreak, Peru is amongst countries with high numbers of positive cases in the region of the South America.