What was feared, finally happened! The Monkeypox has entered India too: the first laboratory-confirmed case of monkeypox virus was reported from a 35-year-old man, who recently arrived in Kerala. Reports indicate that it was an easy identification for the health department since the visitor said about his close contact with an infected man in UAE.
A couple of days back, the Health department in Uttar Pradesh has been put on alert as a woman in Auraiya district has shown symptoms of the disease. Reports claimed that the woman had fever for the past one week with symptoms similar to that of monkeypox. Till now four cases of monkeypox have been reported in India—3 from Kerala, 1 from Delhi. After a 34-year-old man from the national capital with no history of foreign travel tested positive for the monkeypox virus, the Union government held a high-level review meeting and advised airport and port health officers and regional directors from regional offices to ensure strict health screening of all arriving international travellers to minimise the risk of importation of monkeypox cases into the country.
Based on the clinical examination of confirmed cases from Nigeria during 2017-2018, researchers have found that the virus transmitted primarily from an infected animal or from an infected person. Man to man transmission occurs when one comes in contact with the sores, sobs, respiratory droplets, or oral fluids of an infected person. One may even pick it up by coming into contact with recently contaminated clothing, bedding, and other clothes used by an infected person.
Epidemiologists say that it may take several days to a few weeks for an infected person to develop symptoms. Early signs of infection may look like flu-like symptoms: fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, fatigue, and swollen lymph nodes.
In the current outbreak of the disease, it is noticed that all the infected persons need not necessarily develop all these symptoms. Some may have relatively few blisters than what is normally expected. With the result, there is a likelihood of misdiagnosing it as other infectious diseases. Here the danger is the infected man though not showing any symptoms could still transmit the virus to others.
But what is most intriguing about this disease is that while the monkeypox outbreak was noticed in Nigeria as early as 2017 and subsequently dozens of cases were reported from time to time in African countries, no international attempt was made to stop the outbreak in Nigeria, nor did any agency paid requisite attention to research the disease till its latest outbreak in Europe and North America. Even to date, the host animal of the virus that acts as its reservoir is not known. In the light of this, African scientists' accusation that till wealthy countries are affected by the disease, no one had paid attention to study the disease and its spread sounds true.
In India as of now in the absence of any credible data, people should be utmost vigilant and conscious toward personal hygiene, cleanliness and keep sufficient physical distance in social discourse.
