Hands of a patient with monkeypox in 1997 (Source: straitstimes.com)Hanoi (VNA) – Singaporean Ministry of Health (MOH) announcedon May 9 that it has detected the first case of monkeypox, with the patientidentified as a 38-year-old Nigerian who arrived in Singapore in late lastmonth.
The ministry assumed he might contract the disease by eatingbushmeat at a wedding in Nigeria that he attended before his arrival inSingapore. Bushmeat, which can be chimpanzee, gorilla, antelope, birds orrodent, is a staple of some African diets and could be a source of transmissionof the virus.
The man is in stable condition in an isolation ward at theNational Centre for Infectious Diseases, the ministry added.
Although the risk of the disease spreading among human is low,the MOH said it is taking precautions by investigating 23 persons identified asbeing in close contact with the patient while he was in Singapore.
Monkeypox is a virus similar to the human smallpox, whichwas eradicated in 1980. It does not spread easily from person to person, butcan be fatal in rare cases. The infection typically lasts between two and fourweeks, starting from fever and headache to small bumps that spread over thebody.
Human cases of monkeypox have been reported in west andcentral Africa since the 1970s, and the first cases outside Africa werereported in the US in 2003. According to the US-based Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention, monkeypox have only been documented on human threetimes outside Africa – in the US, the UK and Israel.-VNA
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