ISLAMABAD: Pakis­tan has reported the sixth case of mpox after a passenger at Islamabad Inter­national Airport tested positive for the virus.

According to NHS ministry spokesperson Sajid Shah, the Border Health Services (BHS) identified the 44-year-old passenger, who had arrived from a Gulf country, following screening procedures at the airport.

The patient has been admitted to the isolation ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) and is in good health, the spokesperson said.

Dr Mukhtar Bharath, the prime minister’s coordinator on national health services, said the BHS has so far screened 630,000 passengers at different airports across the country.

“The Ministry of Health is ensuring the monitoring of this system,” he said, adding that effective measures were being taken to protect people.

He said the federal and provincial governments are taking all measures and tools to deal with mpox.

Pakistan’s fifth mpox case was reported from Peshawar last week, after a 33-year-old patient, who had also arrived from a Gulf country at Islam­abad Interna­tional Airp­ort and subsequently tra­velled to Peshawar, tested positive for the virus.

The previous four mpox cases in Pakistan were also reported in Peshawar.

On September 8, all four patients in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had fully recovered and were discharged from isolation after testing negative for the virus.

On Friday, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said a total of 146,722 travellers were examined at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport in August.

On Saturday, two passengers, aged 44 and 32, arriving from Saudi Arabia, were taken into observation at a hospital after being suspected of having mpox during screening at Jinnah International Airport.

One of the passengers later tested negative, while the lab report for the other, a Karachi resident, was still pending.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2024