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Earlier on 19th May was sent a notice
from the Massachusetts department of public health, there’s a patient in the
commonwealth of Massachusetts who has been confirmed to have infection with
monkeypox. That patient is currently hospitalized Massachusetts general
hospital and is admitted to special pathogens program and currently he is in a
stable condition.
Monkeypox is a rare infection originally
identified in the 1950’s in monkeys and then the first human case in 1970. Most
of the cases have been reported really out of West Africa or Central Africa and
the cases that have been reported outside of that area have been reported to be
related to travel or to animals like rodents.
There was an outbreak in the United States in
2003 involving many states and that was associated with prairie dogs. The last
year there have been two cases in the United States in November and then in
July, both of those were associated with travel.
A lot of the clinical symptoms to really watch
out for are situations in which patients can present food-like illness and
other sort of very general fevers chills and an unexplained rash or
lymphadenopathy, those are the more classic symptoms so really elevating
knowledge about those and also the epidemiological risk factors in accordance
with those, so thinking about travel to a country where cases have been
identified or thinking about close contact with someone’s who’s been diagnosed
with monkeypox or suspected to have monkeypox and then also men who have
reported sexual contact with other men, those are the big three epidemiological
risk factors.
Officials say people should not be afraid of
monkeypox right now as the current patient with the disease is of no public
health risk right now and people should just be aware of symptoms but not be
afraid in any way.
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