Nigeria recorded its first death from monkeypox this year in a patient who had chronic health problems, according to the Disease Control Authority.
And the Nigerian Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Sunday that in 2022, 21 people out of 66 suspected cases were confirmed to be infected with the disease, which usually spreads epidemically in Nigeria and other parts of West and Central Africa.
The Nigerian Center added: “The death was recorded in a 40-year-old patient who was suffering from other diseases and was taking immunosuppressive drugs.”
Nigeria has not had an outbreak of monkeypox since September 2017, but it continues to report sporadic cases of the disease.
Skin mutations on the body of a young man with monkeypox (archive)
Since then, at least 247 people have been confirmed to have contracted the disease in 22 of its 36 states, with a death rate of 3.6%, according to the center.
A recent increase in monkeypox cases has been recorded in Europe and the United States, and has raised fears among the residents of those countries, most of which have not recorded any case of the disease for years.
More than 200 cases have been reported in more than 20 countries that have not experienced outbreaks before, according to the World Health Organization. Monkeypox has not previously recorded large outbreaks outside Africa.
According to the World Health Organization, monkeypox is a rare and zoonotic viral disease (a virus is transmitted from animal to human).
monkeypox virus
One of the symptoms of infection is swollen lymph nodes before the appearance of a rash, a feature that distinguishes monkeypox from other similar diseases. There is no treatment or vaccine available to combat the virus, although vaccination against smallpox has proven highly effective in preventing it.
Monkeypox was first detected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, and since then most cases have been reported in rural rainforest areas of the Congo Basin and West Africa.
Outside the countries where the disease is endemic, the recorded infections are generally minor and no deaths have been recorded so far.