Viral Disease Monkeypox Hits Bayelsa State, Nigeria

A new viral epidemic called Monkeypox has broken out in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. As many as 11 people including a medical doctor have been quarantined in an isolation centre at the Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital Okolobiri in Yenagoa Local Government Area of the state.

Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the epidemiological team of the state’s Ministry of Health created the Isolation center to control the spread of the disease.

NCDC and the epidemiological team is currently searching for 49 other people, who had been in contact with infected victims.

A 7-year-old Congolese child developed monkeypox after hunting squirrels in the forest

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes Monkeypox (MPXV) as:

... an orthopoxvirus that causes human monkeypox (MPX), a viral disease with symptoms in humans similar to that seen in smallpox patients. Smallpox no longer occurs, following its worldwide eradication in 1980, whereas human monkeypox is regularly reported in villages of Central and West Africa close to tropical rainforest where there is frequent contact with infected animals.

Monkeypox is usually transmitted to humans from non-human primates, squirrels or other rodents (e.g. Gambian rats) through contact with the infected animal’s blood or through a bite. Humans also acquire the disease through direct contact with infected patients but there is no evidence to date that person-to-person transmission alone can sustain MPX in the human population.

The state Commissioner for Health, Prof. Ebitimitula Etebu reported that the virus has the Central African and the West African types but that the West African type is milder and has no records of mortality.

He also stated that samples of the virus, has been sent to the World Health Organisation (WHO) laboratory in Dakar, Senegal, for confirmation.

Infected Monkey