Health officials in Cameroon report that a monkeypox outbreak has been detected in the town of Mbonge, but armed separatists are preventing personnel from looking into possible cases.
According to representatives of the Cameroonian government, health workers have been sent to the Kumba and Mbonge districts to warn hundreds of citizens who are believed to have monkeypox infections to immediately isolate themselves and avoid contact with other people and animals, including pets.
Districts called Kumba and Mbonge are found in the southwest part of English-speaking Cameroon, close to the Nigerian border.
Civilians are receiving education after a probable monkeypox infection was confirmed in Kumba, according to Emmanuel Lenya Nefenda, the highest senior Cameroonian public health official in Kumba.
According to him, the epidemic of monkeypox in Bole Bakundu, a community in Mbonge, was confirmed by Cameroonian public health officials after the case was reported.
Nefenda advised people to stay away from wild animals, refrain from eating them, and wear clean clothes as opposed to “bush cloths” that might have come into contact with rodents or other animals in order to stop the spread of the highly contagious monkeypox.
According to the authorities, there is just one confirmed case of monkeypox in Kumba, and the patient is being treated in an isolation unit at the hospital. Several dozen samples have been taken from potential patients and sent to specialized labs in Yaounde, the city of Cameroon, for testing.
Civilians are being advised by health officials to take suspicious patients to hospitals rather than to herbalists or African traditional healers in rural areas. However, people claim that because of continuous fighting between government forces and separatists, it is impossible to get suspected patients to hospitals, which are located distant from towns.
Separatists claim on social media sites like Facebook and WhatsApp that any medical personnel deployed to Yaounde by the central government of Cameroon must gain permission from fighters.
However, according to the government, only state officials from Cameroon can guarantee the safety of medical personnel treating patients who may have monkeypox infections.
Armed groups should permit medical personnel to provide humanitarian relief, according to Eko Eko Filbert, the top government official in charge of public health in Cameroon’s English-speaking Southwest area, where Kumba and Mbonge are situated.
He claimed that although monkeypox is contagious, it may be contained with the aid of medical professionals.
Afraid health personnel are afraid to go out in search of patients and suspected patients, according to Eko, who claimed that no health official assigned to assist people suspected of having monkeypox infection has been attacked.
According to the U.N., Cameroon is an endemic monkeypox country, but armed conflict-related relocation away from established surveillance systems raises the possibility of undetected transmission.
The World Health Organisation announced on Wednesday that instances of monkeypox had increased in 21 countries during the previous week, especially in the Americas, which accounted for nearly 90% of all cases reported the previous week.
The WHO said that the number of cases in the worldwide outbreak of monkeypox has surpassed 70,000 and cautioned that just because there are fewer new cases, people shouldn’t let their guard down because this could be the most hazardous period of the outbreak.
According to the U.N., the illness results in fever, muscle pains, and significant skin lesions that resemble boils.