According to health officials, at least 28 cases of Mpox and one death have been recorded in Ivory Coast.
“The National Public Hygiene Institute (INHP) recorded 28 confirmed cases, including one death across the country as of Tuesday”, said an INHP doctor, Daouda Coulibaly.
The country’s economic capital, Abidjan, recorded the fatal case and some others, as reported by the INHP. Coulibaly mentioned that tests are underway to identify the strain of the most recent Mpox cases.
“The situation is no cause for alarm,” Coulibaly said. “We are seeing just the start of a nascent epidemic — there is no upsurge” in cases.
He mentioned that monitoring for Mpox had been strengthened.
“We have to break the chains of transmission, identify the contacts of cases, isolate them and monitor them.”
The clade 2 subtype of the Mpox virus, which was responsible for the spread during the previous epidemic in 2022, was recorded in the West African country.
DR Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Sweden have experienced the emergence of a more contagious and deadly subtype called clade 1b.
This year, over 500 individuals in DR Congo have succumbed to some form of Mpox.
Last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared it a global public health emergency.