Ghana yesterday reported its first mpox case of the year, putting the number of African nations reporting cases to 16, officials from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said yesterday at a briefing.
In a statement, the Ghana Health Service said the patient is a young boy from the Western North region who presented with rash, fever, and general body pain. The boy is in stable condition and has been discharged. Health officials are monitoring 25 of the patient’s contacts.
So far, the clade of the virus isn’t known. The country reported eight cases in 2023.
At yesterday’s briefing, Jean Kaseya, MD, MPH, Africa CDC’s director-general, said African countries are still reporting about 2,500 mpox cases each week, though nearly 95% are reported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi.
In the DRC, the number of cases in Kinshasa are increasing, with one more zone reporting a clade 1b case. The country’s capital is experiencing circulation of both the 1a and 1b clades, with 616 cases, 171 of the confirmed, reported so far.
Kaseya said the mpox vaccination campaign in the DRC is expected to begin tomorrow. Immunization has already launched in Rwanda, and Nigeria is expected to begin giving doses on October 8.
WHO approves first mpox test for emergency use
In other developments, the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday announced that it has listed the first in vitro mpox test for emergency use. The Alinity mpox test, made by Abbott, is a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test that can detect clade 1 and 2 mpox virus from lesion swabs.
In a statement, Yukiko Nakatani, MD, PhD, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said, the emergency listing will expand testing availability in affected countries. “Increasing access to quality-assured medical products is central to our efforts in assisting countries to contain the spread of the virus and protect their people, especially in underserved regions.”
