The Ministry of Health (Ssa) published an epidemiological notice directed at the country's medical units to strengthen surveillance and reporting of probable cases of monkeypox to reduce transmission chains as much as possible and provide necessary medical care to patients.
Between January and August 2, 47 cases were reported in the country, of which 29 are in Mexico City and the rest in 10 other states. Of the total, only two are women, reported the SSA Epidemiological Bulletin, which lists MPOX as a vaccine-preventable disease.
The agency assured that the presence of the new variant 1b has not been identified.
WHO declares global monkeypox emergency
The increase in cases of monkeypox (mpox) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the rapid sexual spread of a new strain (1b) led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a new public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
He indicated that the number of cases has increased significantly since 2023, and so far this year there have been more than 15,600 cases and 537 deaths.
The disease has also been detected in countries neighboring the DRC, which WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described as "particularly worrying." Experts on the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee considered that MPOX has the potential to spread to more countries in Africa and beyond.
In Geneva, Dimie Ogoina, chair of the emergency committee, stressed that Africa's failure to control the infection led to the 2022 global outbreak, which affected more than 70 countries, and that "decisive action is now needed to prevent history from repeating itself."
The WHO noted that MPOX is caused by an Orthopoxvirus; it was first detected in humans in 1970, in the DRC.
