By Abdullahi M. Gulloma
There is no confirmed case of monkey pox in the country yet, the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said at the end of the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
He said that the Centre for Disease Control has taken samples for analysis in laboratories in some parts of the country and in Senegal with results yet to be released.
“Monkey pox…actually started in Bayelsa and we have recorded 33 suspected cases, in all, from the states of Bayelsa, Rivers, Ekiti, Akwa Ibom,Lagos, Ogun and Cross River and what is particularly significant is that many of the cases so reported do not fit into the classic prototype of monkey pox but we are trying to confirm before the of today or early tomorrow we should be able to confirm exactly what we are dealing with,” the minister said. “But what is obvious is that we have a disease that is close to the pox family.”
The minister said that Professor Christian Appeh (a scientist) is looking into it in the laboratory to confirm if truly it’s monkey pox that the country is dealing with.
He said government is also doing a double confirmation in Senegal because the country has a public health laboratory that could diagnosis the samples.
“There are two types of monkey pox, there is the central African type and the west African type, we suspect that if confirmed we probably have the west African type which is milder because so far we have not recorded any death from monkey pox…We are looking at the two and hopefully in the next 24 or 48 hours we should be able to make a diagnosis as to what we have,” he said.
More importantly, the minister said “let’s wash our hands, let’s avoid contact with dead animals, clean our surroundings and as much as possible for health workers to maintain barrier nursing while managing people with suspected cases of monkey pox.”
But, while this warning is essential, the government should also look into how it could improve the dietary conditions of Nigerians because without doing so, people, especially the masses, will stick to eating bush meats, a habit said to be responsible for the spread of monkey pox and other related diseases.
