Pakistan’s Health Ministry says it has Identified a Case of Mpox

Pakistan’s Health Ministry said Friday it has identified a case of mpox days after the World Health Organization declared the spread of the disease a global health emergency.

The case, in a man who had recently returned from a Middle Eastern country, is the first in Pakistan this year but the nature of the variant was yet to be determined.

The first case was reported on Thursday by authorities in Sweden.

Sequencing is being done to determine whether it is a new variant.

The Director of Public Health for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Dr. Irshad Roghani, said the person infected with mpox in Pakistan has mild symptoms.

Roghani said that since 2022, 300 people have been tested in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, of whom two tested positive last year.

This is the first case detected this year.

The ministry said the man was from Mardan, a district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

It said the ministry has directed officials at border crossing points and airports to ensure strict surveillance and collect samples for medical tests if they see symptoms of the disease in any passenger returning from abroad.

It was unclear which Middle Eastern country the man had visited, and no cases of the new variant have yet been reported in that region.

On Wednesday, the WHO said there have been more than 14,000 cases and 524 deaths in Africa this year, which already exceed last year’s figures. More than 96% of all cases and deaths have been in Congo.