Mpox vaccine unavailability triggers infection control alert

KARACHI: Due to the unavailability of mpox vaccine, an infection control alert has been issued in the metropolitan city of Karachi following the confirmation of at least one monkeypox case in the country.

The alert, applicable to the city’s private and government-run hospitals, comes after the Federal Health Ministry on Friday confirmed the diagnosis of mpox virus in a patient who had returned from a Gulf country.

A spokesperson of the ministry said the sequencing of the confirmed case was underway, and that it would not be clear which variant of mpox the patient had until the process was complete.

Meanwhile,  Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health authorities confirmed one mpox case after withdrawing their previous statement that three mpox patients had been detected there this week on arrival from the United Arab Emirates.

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Although the experts say that the mpox vaccine does provide some protection against the disease, DOW University’s Infectious disease specialist University Professor Dr Saeed Khan has said that the disease’s vaccine is currently unavailable.

Mpox is a viral disease related to the now-eradicated smallpox virus and can spread through any close contact and through contaminated materials like sheets, clothing and needles, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Highlighting that the WHO has declared a global emergence over mpox spread, health experts have said that the disease can be transferred from animals to humans as well as from one person to another.

It is to be noted that last year Pakistan reported nine cases of Mpox, all among travellers returning from the Middle East and other countries with one fatality of a patient in Islamabad, who was co-infected with HIV and mpox.