Kerala has reported the first probable case of monkeypox in India, according to the state’s health minister on Thursday.
A traveller from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who had just arrived in Kerala three days earlier was admitted to the hospital after exhibiting signs of monkeypox. Health Minister Veena George announced today that samples from the traveller have been submitted to the National Institute of Virology in Pune for testing. She added that the case cannot be confirmed until the test results are received.
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes monkeypox as a viral zoonosis, or an animal-to-human virus transmission, with symptoms like those once experienced by people with smallpox, but less severe clinically.
Humans can contract monkeypox by coming into close contact with an animal or person who has the disease, as well as by coming into contact with contaminated objects. According to the WHO, the condition typically has a two- to four-week symptom duration and is self-limited.
By coming into intimate contact with lesions, bodily fluids, respiratory droplets, and infected objects like bedding, the monkeypox virus can spread from one person to another.
Monkeypox has a clinical appearance similar to smallpox, an orthopaxvirus infection that was eliminated globally in 1980. It frequently manifests clinically as a fever, rash, and enlarged lymph nodes and can cause a variety of health issues.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where smallpox had been eradicated in 1968, a 9-month-old boy was the first person to be diagnosed with human monkeypox.
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Cases of Monkeypox
According to WHO, since that time, the majority of cases have come from remote, rain forest areas of the Congo Basin, mainly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and human cases have been recorded more often from central and west Africa as a whole.
The first monkeypox epidemic outside of Africa occurred in the United States of America in 2003, and contact with pet prairie dogs that had the disease was to blame. These pets had been kept with dormice and pouched rats from Ghana that were brought from the Gambia.
Over 70 cases of monkeypox were brought on by this epidemic in the US. Travelers from Nigeria to Israel in September 2018, the UK in September 2018, December 2019, May 2021, and May 2022, Singapore in May 2019, and the United States of America in July and November 2021 have also been reported to have monkeypox. Monkeypox cases were found in a number of non-endemic nations in May 2022.
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