Guyana records 2nd case of Monkeypox

Aug 30, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – Guyana has recorded its second case of the dreaded Monkeypox disease, Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony confirmed on Monday.

Monkeypox is a disease which causes pus-filled blisters that crust over and fall off, is spread by coming into contact with an infected person or animal.

During his daily update on Monday, he told the nation that a patient is in a stable condition and has been admitted at the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara.

While the minister did not give any details on the patient, he said that health officers have already engaged in contact tracing for possible victims.

Kaieteur News was later informed that the second victim is a woman in her 30’s from Region Four who has no connection to the first case of the disease. On August 22, Guyana recorded its first case of the virus, a taxi driver whom health authorities claimed had not travelled overseas or come into contact here with someone who had the disease.

Monkeypox is a disease which causes pus-filled blisters that crust over and fall off. It spreads by someone coming into contact with a person or an animal infected with the virus. Last May, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the growing Monkeypox outbreak as a global health emergency.

As such, Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony is appealing to Guyanese to take all precautions and report suspected cases of the disease. During his update on Monday, Minister noted that, “The treatment for Monkeypox is basically symptomatic, if you experience fever; we are going to treat you for fever, if you experience pain, we are going to treat you for pain, in some countries like the United States, and they have specific antiretroviral medicines that they give to very severe cases. Those medicines are under Emergency Use authorization license, we don’t have access to those medications in Guyana and it will be quite difficult for us to access those.”

He explained, “If you had small pox vaccination, that vaccination helps to prevent Monkeypox, but we haven’t administered those vaccines since the 1980’s, so there is a large group of people in the country, who would not have received that vaccine, you have a large group of vulnerable people.”

At the interim, Dr. Anthony said that Guyana has activated its response to fight the disease by raising the capacity of laboratories, trained laboratory personnel, and physicians to identify the disease.

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