Kenya’s incidence of mpox disease rises as fourth case confirmed

NAIROBI, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — Kenya’s Ministry of Health on Saturday confirmed a fourth case of mpox in the country as the incidence of the disease rises.
Mary Muthoni, principal secretary in the Ministry of Health, said in a statement that the case was detected in Gilgil, about 120 km northwest of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
Muthoni said the case involved a truck driver traveling from Kenya’s port city of Mombasa to neighboring Rwanda. “He felt unwell on Aug. 28 while passing through Gilgil and was unable to continue his journey.”
She added that the government dispatched the region’s Rapid Response Team immediately to assess the case. The patient was, thereafter, evacuated to an isolation center, where he was admitted and is in stable condition.
On Friday, Kenya announced a third case detected in the country involving a 30-year-old woman in Nairobi, who had traveled to neighboring Uganda.
“She is in stable condition undergoing management in an isolation unit in Nairobi,” Patrick Amoth, director-general for health in the Ministry of Health, said in a statement.
Two other cases of mpox had been detected earlier in the coastal county of Taita Taveta on the Kenya-Tanzania border and in Busia County on the Kenya-Uganda border.
Muthoni said the government has stepped up surveillance for suspected cases countrywide in a bid to halt further transmission of the disease, whose symptoms include skin rashes, fever, sore throat, headaches, and swollen lymph nodes.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, a key trading partner of Kenya, remains the epicenter of the disease that has spread to several countries in Africa and across the globe.
The World Health Organization earlier this month declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern, sounding the alarm over its potential for further international transmission. ■