Monkeypox: Nigeria to get corroborative test outcomes Friday – Official

Mr. Ihekweazu made this known on Tuesday while reacting to inquiries from individuals from the Senate Committee on Primary Health Care and Communicable Disease.

The board of trustees had welcomed him to disclose to them the ebb and flow circumstance of monkeypox, an ailment which softened out up Bayelsa State toward the end of last month.

While implying the congresspersons at work done as such far, Mr. Ihekweazu said there is no affirmation yet in the event that the more than 30 speculated cases in three states were monkeypox.

"We are certain that we have distinguished every one of the cases identified with the issue in Bayelsa. We've sent examples from Bayelsa to the research facility and we are expecting the outcome before the finish of tomorrow (Friday) when we'll have the capacity to state completely whether it is monkeypox or not.

"The hazard in human isn't entirely eating the meat, the hazard is in getting ready, executing it, cutting it and not appropriately washing your hands. Not very many individuals kick the bucket from the ailment and we have not recorded any passing. It is under control. We don't think every single revealed case in different states are monkeypox however we have an obligation to explore every one of the cases."

On why it is requiring investment to decide whether the cases were monkeypox or not, Mr. Ihekweazu said that the nation has no open research center equipped for diagnosing the sickness.

"We set up a crisis focus at the Nigeria Center for Disease Control where we are organizing the whole reaction, getting data from states, prompting them on what tests to gather and sending those examples to the research facility we have in Nigeria and the one in Dakar where they are doing the analysis for us.

"Monkeypox is an extremely uncommon infection. It last happened in Nigeria in the 70s. Thus, most research centers don't have the ability to make this finding. It is just a single lab in Redeemers University that has ability to do the analysis in Nigeria. The other lab in West Africa is in Dakar. Thus, we have part the specimens, sent half to Redeemers and half to Dakar.

"Right now we have 33 cases, 17 in Bayelsa, out of that 17, we figure we may have monkeypox casualties however we haven't affirmed yet. Different cases crosswise over different states are probably not monkeypox, but rather until the point when we have the outcome, we can't be sure about that."

National organizer, Nigeria Center for Disease Control, NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu [Photo: Health News Extra]