PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s second case of the mpox virus was reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Nowshera district, the national health coordinator confirmed on Friday.

“A second case of mpox has been reported in Pakistan, which has come from a Gulf country,” Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad, the Prime Minister’s coordinator for health, was quoted as saying by PTV News, according to a Dawn.com report.

“The health desk at the Peshawar airport shifted the patient to a hospital,” he added. The health coordinator did not specify whether the virus strain of the case had been confirmed so far.

Dr Mukhtar further said that the health ministry was working to ensure continuous monitoring of the situation through an “effective system of screening and surveillance at all airports”.

According to Director Public Health Dr Irshad Roghani, the infected person is 47 years old and belongs to the Nowshera district, APP reported.

The first case of mpox virus in KP during the current year was confirmed on Aug 15 in Mardan district.

In a video message shared on Friday, Dr Rog­h­ani said the infected person was detected at Pesha­war airport on Thursday morning during the screening of passengers coming from the Gulf region.

The screening team shifted the suspected patient to Police Hospital in Peshawar for further examination and isolation.

After obtaining the patient’s travel history, his blood tests were sent to the Public Health Reference Laboratory of Khyber Medical Univer­sity, which confirmed the infection of mpox.

For genetic sequencing of the mpox variant, a blood sample had been sent to the National Ins­titute of Health Islam­abad and the finding would be shared with stakeholders, including media, the director public health added.

The patient has been admitted to the Police Hospital in an isolation ward and is in stable condition, he said.

The patient also shared that such symptoms were also visible in another person who lived with him in the same apartment.

On Aug 11, he felt a fever and the appearance of lesions on his skin, which kept on increasing. As he arrived at Peshawar, he was isolated and tested for mpox infection, as per Dr Roghani.

Dr Naseem Akhtar, the focal person at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims), said on Monday that a 47-year-old traveller from the Middle East was referred by the airport authorities to Pims on suspicion of being infected with mpox.

The individual was working as a labourer in the Middle East and was a resident of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Dr Akhtar said.

Last week, the World Health Organisation declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years, following an outbreak of viral infection in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has spread to neighbouring countries.

The disease presents with flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. It is usually mild but can kill, and children, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems are at higher risk of complications.

A new form of the virus, clade 1b, triggered global concern as it seems to be spreading quickly and little is known about the strain.

The disease transmits through close contact. The new strain has spread to at least two countries outside Africa.

However, the mpox outbreak is not another Covid-19, the WHO has said, because much is already known about the virus and the means to control it.

The health ministry clarified earlier this week that the first mpox case detected in Pakistan was of the clade 2 variety and that no cases of the clade 1b strain of the disease have been diagnosed.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2024