State traces paths of persons likely to have contracted Mpox
By George Kebaso, August 2, 2024The government was yesterday trying to trace any persons who may have come into contact with the first case of Monkey Pox (Mpox) that was reported in the country on Wednesday.
Mpox is caused by a virus originating from primates, particularly, the monkeys.
Public Health and Professional Standards Principal Secretary, Mary Muthoni, assured the public that the government had reactivated the multi-agency teams to ensure that there is no further spread of the highly contagious disease.
“We have deployed our health teams to Taita Taveta for the response, and we are doing contact tracing, and also enhanced on surveillance,” she said yesterday, this is meant to ensure no further spread.
By last evening the Ministry had not confirmed how many people the unidentified case detected at the Taita Taveta border was with, even as specialists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) were trying to determine this particular strain through the samples obtained, according to some media reports.
Surveillance team
“We have also been able to disseminate information on what needs to be collected from the ground through our surveillance team,” the PS said in Embu where she went to oversee a training of Community Health Promoters (CHPs). Muthoni stated that the Ministry is very much committed to ensure that any further outbreak is contained, may it be cholera, Mpox or any other. This is at any given time,” she added.
From available information, Kenya is the third country in East Africa to report Mpox outbreak after the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.
In December 2022, the DRC declared a national outbreak of Mpox, and in February 2023 the country enhanced an incident management system, based on the increasing number of reported cases.
“Since September 2023, an outbreak of Mpox in South Kivu province has continued to spread within the province and recently to neighbouring North Kivu, driven by sexual contact transmission,” a report on the World Health Organisation (WHO) website indicates, describing a new variant of Clade I MPXV in South Kivu.
The PS said the Ministry was working closely with other state agencies, port health services, county governments, and the national government administration agencies.
Individual detected
“The quarantine process will continue for any individual detected with Mpox to curb any further spread to the country,” said Muthoni, noting that Port Health officers in all the 32 ports of entry were well trained, and able to monitor any kind of outbreak that may be at the border level.
“And even by the virtue that our teams were able to detect this, shows how much enhancement the government has done at the border,” she said.
The Ministry of Health through the Public Health office gave an advisory regarding the patient who was detected at the Taita Taveta border, and so far has been able to isolate the individual after testing.
Early in the week, the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat raised alarm over the fast spreading of Mpox and called on EAC Partner States to educate their citizens on how to protect themselves and prevent the spread of Mpox (Monkeypox).
This followed reports from the WHO that Burundi and the DRC were experiencing an outbreak of the viral Mpox disease.
The Burundian health ministry has assured the public that measures are in place to manage the disease, with patients currently receiving treatment and showing improvement.
Since 2022, the DRC has reported over 21,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths, according to WHO.
In 2023, there were 14,626 cases and 654 deaths, and by the end of May 2024, 7,851 cases and 384 deaths had been reported. Many of those infected are children under five, about 39 percent, and nearly two-thirds – 62 percent – of the deaths are also among children. Burundi borders DRC, Rwanda and Tanzania while the DRC borders five EAC Partner States: Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan.