PAKISTAN — Pakistani health authorities have confirmed the first case of mpox, an infectious viral disease that was earlier known as monkeypox, in the country.

The virus was found in a 25-year-old Pakistani man who had recently arrived in Islamabad from Saudi Arabia.

Sajid Shah, a health ministry official, revealed that the patient has been quarantined in a hospital in the capital, and contact tracing has begun.

Despite the presence of the virus in the patient, there is no evidence of localized transmission of mpox in Pakistan, and the risk of international spread of the disease from Pakistan remains low, Shah said.

An alert has been issued to all airports in the country and to provincial health departments to ensure “surveillance, contact tracing and rapid identification of suspected cases,” Shah added.

Mustafa Jamal Kazi, a senior official in the ministry, disclosed that the patient was sent into isolation on April 21 after his arrival in Pakistan.

After mpox cases were detected in other countries, Pakistan increased its vigilance at all international airports and deployed health teams.

“We have trained staff deployed at the airports, and they have been provided required logistics support, such as gloves, disinfectants, masks, among others,” Kazi said. “WHO procedures and precautionary measures and ambulances have been deployed as well.”

The mpox virus is an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus, which can be transmitted from infected animals to humans or from infected people to other people through close contact and droplets. It can cause a painful rash, fever, sore throat, and swollen lymph nodes.

The WHO reported a global outbreak of the disease in May last year across Europe and North America. Since the beginning of last year, more than 87,000 confirmed cases of mpox have been detected globally, and more than 120 people have died.

The United States leads the tally with more than 30,000 cases and 44 deaths.

The WHO stated that the global outbreak primarily affected gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men as the virus spread person-to-person through sexual networks.

Health officials, however, stressed that anybody can contract mpox. Since May, 22 samples from suspected cases in Pakistan were referred from different parts of the country, and tests showed no sign of the virus, Shah said.

“The health ministry is vigilantly monitoring the situation both at the national and global levels while keeping all the relevant stakeholders onboard for ensuring preparedness, timely response and containment of mpox cases in Pakistan,” he said.

The mpox virus was discovered in Denmark in 1958, and its first reported human case was a nine-month-old boy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, according to the WHO.

The spread of the disease slowed with only sporadic cases found in Central and West Africa before an outbreak was reported in the US in 2003.

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