Mpox: NCDC places airports, seaports, states on high alert

Following the declaration of Mpox as a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS) by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Africa CDC, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has placed all port health services across all five international airports, 10 seaports, and 51 land/foot crossing borders on high alert.

The centre also placed nine states, Lagos, Enugu, Kano, Rivers, Cross-River, Akwa-Ibom, Adamawa, and Taraba and Abuja on high alert. Meanwhile, a total of 39 confirmed cases and zero deaths have been recorded across 33 states and the FCT, from the beginning of the year.

A breakdown of states with the highest figure showed that Bayelsa has five cases, Cross River five, Ogun four, Lagos four, Ondo three, and Ebonyi three. To this end, the Federal Government is considering vaccination for high-risk groups and hotspot areas as Nigeria expects to receive 10,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine.

Director General of NCDC, Dr Jide Idris, who disclosed this, yesterday, in Abuja, said about 2,863 confirmed cases and 517 deaths had been reported across 13 African countries, adding that the alarming increase was linked to a new strain of the Mpox virus, which emerged in eastern Congo and had since been detected in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.

He said that considering the significant concern about the ease of cross-border transmission, NCDC was intensifying coordination and communication with stakeholders to manage the spread of the virus and prevent disease importation.

The NCDC boss observed that the government was making an effort to make vaccines available to the public, especially the hotspot areas, adding that the vaccine had been shown to have a favourable safety profile.

Idris explained that Mpox, which is a rare viral zoonotic infectious disease of animals transmitted from animals to humans, was endemic in several African countries, including the tropical rainforests of Central and West Africa, adding that the exact reservoir of the virus was still unknown although rodents, squirrels and monkeys are suspected to play a part in transmission.

According to him, the Mpox virus can spread both from animal to human and from human to human. Animal-to-human transmission, he said, could occur by direct contact with the blood, body fluids, skin or mucosal lesions of infected animals, such as monkeys, squirrels, and rodents, among others. According to him, the signs and symptoms of the illness include fever, headache, body aches, weakness, swollen lymph nodes (glands) and rash.