Another mpox case reported to PIMS

At least one case of the Clade-2 variant of the monkeypox (mpox) virus was detected in the country, the health ministry said, as another suspected case was reported to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Hospital on Monday.

PIMS Hospital staff identified the patient as a 47-year-old resident of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), who had recently returned to the country from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Dr Nasim Akhtar, focal person at the hospital said that the man had been placed in a special ward designated for such cases at PIMS.

Prior to the latest suspected case, the authorities had reported three confirmed monkeypox infections. All the three had recently returned to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), they added.

The first monkeypox patient, who was diagnosed last week, had gone missing from his home in Mardan. The health department reported that the diagnosis was made in Peshawar and when a medical team visited the patient's residence to provide guidelines, the house was found locked.

Dr Irshad Roghani, the Director of the Public Health in K-P, told the Provincial Outbreak Committee that the genetic sequencing of the virus, infecting the patient in Mardan district had been detected as 'Clade-2b' strain -- a type originated from West Africa and spread throughout the world in 2022.

The meeting was informed that the mpox patient had an accident in a foreign country on August 3, and returned to Pakistan on August 10. He visited the Khyber Teaching Hospital for treatment of a broken leg. But seeing the symptoms, the doctor isolated the patient and sent samples to laboratory.