The Kenyan Health Ministry has dispatched health care workers to Taita-Taveta County, where a case of mpox was detected Wednesday.
Authorities say the person who tested positive for the virus traveled through the county along the Kenyan-Tanzanian border.
Kenya Health Ministry Principal Secretary Mary Muthoni said health officials were deployed in an effort to prevent the virus from spreading.
“We are doing what we are calling contact tracing and more surveillance. We have enhanced surveillance but even in itself by the virtue that our teams were able to detect this it shows you how much enhancement we have done at the border,” Muthoni said. “Our port health officers at all 32 points of entry are well trained and we are able to monitor any kind of outbreak that may be at the border level.”
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is endemic to forested areas of East, Central, and West Africa.
Virus symptoms include high fever, skin rash, headache, swollen lymph nodes, and general body aches. The virus can spread through direct contact with a sick person and also through respiratory droplets.
According to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 1,450 people have died of mpox across 15 African countries since the start of 2022.
In the past seven months, 14,250 mpox cases and 456 deaths have been recorded.
Taita-Taveta County resident Haji Mohamed Mwakio told VOA he is concerned for himself and his community because he has not seen any measures being taken advising the community to practice healthy living.
Taita-Taveta County is home to more than 340,000 people. Muthoni of the Ministry of Health said medical officials are following up on the patient and the people he met.
“We have been able to isolate this patient after testing,” Muthoni said. “We are yet to confirm how many people he was with, so we have deployed our health teams to Taita-Taveta for the response.”
Health officials are concerned about an outbreak of the virus across several countries.
According to the Associated Press, Burundi, Central African Republic, and Rwanda reported mpox cases for the first time this week.
Mwakio said the countries need to work together to manage the spread of the virus by taking precautions and control measures at border points. He also said governments should help the communities understand the situation and how they can protect themselves.
On Sunday, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an organization that develops vaccines against emerging infectious diseases, announced plans to give an mpox vaccine to those who have been exposed to the virus to see if it can protect them from the illness.
