The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has confirmed 40 cases of mpox disease in the country, News About Nigeria reports.
NCDC Director-General, Dr. Jide Idris, disclosed this while speaking at the Joint NCDC/World Health Organisation National Mpox briefing with stakeholders and partners in Abuja on Friday.
He noted that the 40 confirmed cases are out of 830 suspected cases and no deaths have been recorded so far.
He also disclosed that an emergency operations centre and an incident management system have been established since mpox was declared a public health emergency of international concern.
Idris, however, noted that the number of laboratories for testing, including Lagos University Teaching Hospital and the African Centre for Genomics, needs to be increased due to the spread.
He said that all confirmed cases so far were validated using genomic sequencing in the National Research Lab in Abuja and Lagos.
“Currently, we have 40 confirmed cases out of 830 suspected cases. We have not recorded any deaths, which is remarkable. We have developed an incident action plan to address each area, using various pillars.
“We have met with state governments and state commissioners of health to advise them on establishing their emergency preparedness and response teams, capabilities, and action plans. They will coordinate this with their respective local government areas.
“Another key area is surveillance. Of the 40 cases reported in the country, they are distributed across about 12 or 13 states. Many cases are in the South-South and South-East, with some in Lagos, Ogun, and other northern areas. Our plans are to target these states to reduce the number of cases and conduct active surveillance to detect more cases,” he stated.
