Health authorities in Guyana have confirmed the country’s first Monkeypox case.
The country’s Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony made the disclosure earlier today during an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI).
The official said that the male patient, who is reportedly in his 50s and hails from Region Four, has since been isolated at the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara.
“They start developing these signs and they came to the hospital and because the system was alerted, the doctors felt that this looked like a suspected case of monkeypox and they followed the protocol that we have established, one of which is for us to take samples and for them to run it in the lab to confirm whether it’s monkeypox or not. So we’ve done that and we are now in a position to confirm that it is monkeypox,” he said.
According to Dr Anthony, the patient is stable. Those who had close contact with the man are in quarantine.
The Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as the variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox symptoms but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal, the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says.
Symptoms of monkeypox can include fever, headache, muscle aches and backaches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, and respiratory complications.
When infected, a rash or blisters that can appear on the face, inside the mouth, and on other parts of the body, like the hands, feet, chest, genitals, or anus. The rash goes through different stages before healing completely. The illness typically lasts two to four weeks.
