Monkeypox should be declared global health emergency - expert
As the number of global cases rises to over 3 000, the World Health Organisation says it's been holding talks on the monkeypox outbreak.
The virus could be declared an Emergency of International Concern, which is the organisations highest form of alert.
South Africa yesterday reported its first case of monkeypox - joining some 40 other countries that have identified patients with the disease.
The 30-year-old man from Johannesburg has no travel history.
Health officials say the process of contact tracing is under way.
Calum Semple, a Professor of Outbreak Medicine in the UK, has told Sky News he thinks the WHO will declare the outbreak a global health emergency.
"That forces countries to have action planned. Amongst the action planned could be, for example, targeted vaccination of people at risk and increasing surveillance in those countries which need surveillance improved so it will release funds for that kind of work."
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Initial symptoms of monkeypox typically include a high fever, swollen lymph nodes and a blistery, chickenpox-like rash.
The disease is usually mild and patients normally recover after two or three weeks.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases explained that the virus isn't highly transmissible.
"Compared to other viruses, and if you think about smallpox specifically, it's less transmissable," says the NICD's Professor Adrian Purin.
"So you really need close contact between individuals, close and prolonged contact. That means, for example, face-to-face case as well as body contact, in other words if there is contact during a sexual act. So that's one other route.
"It could also be routes for example linen, bed, clothes that have been exposed to the virus that can and does survive and therefore is a form of transmission."
