Maharashtra Braces For Screening Rules At Airport Amidst Mpox Alert

Mumbai: As the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Mpox a global public health emergency as the infection cases spread beyond Africa, the Maharashtra government’s state public health department has framed guidelines to tackle it and ramped up the screening rules in the state. The directives issued by the Maharashtra government include measures such as setting up isolation wards and implementing airport screening, drawing on strategies used during the Influenza A (H1N1) and COVID-19 pandemics.

This has come up after the WHO declared Mpox a public health emergency, sparking concerns worldwide, experts have slammed the global health body for creating unnecessary panic.

Meanwhile, the experts stated that such measures, such as screening travellers at airports and railway stations and contact tracing efforts are futile as these strategies failed to prove effective earlier as well.

The experts asserted that individuals arriving from infected countries are often asymptomatic during screening but may develop symptoms later, making them hard to trace. Moreover, this might result in unreported infections, since Mpox has a stigma as a sexually transmitted infection (STI) and people might hide their symptoms to avoid disclosing their contacts.

The experts stated that no one will enter the country or travel within the country with visible symptoms. After getting infected the patient shows symptoms a few days later. However, this doesn’t mean an individual is not infected.

Meanwhile, the Mpox infections have now been reported in Pakistan after Africa and Germany. The experts have described the strain circulating outside Africa as the most lethal and infectious, underscoring the need to vaccinate vulnerable populations in Africa, particularly the LGBT community and individuals with multiple sexual partners, as Mpox is predominantly seen among these groups.

Meanwhile, to keep a tab on the spread of the Mpox infection, the government has issued guidelines mandating airports screen international travelers for Mpox symptoms and isolate patients as needed.