IN a meeting at Moses Mabhida Stadium today, May 26, KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC, Nomagugu Simelane said that the province is on high alert for monkeypox.
At this point, there have not been any cases of monkeypox reported in South Africa, however, the MEC said the Department is taking measures to screen people and cargo coming into South Africa from countries where the disease has been confirmed.
Simelane called for calm, saying communicable disease surveillance and control systems in KZN have been activated, ensuring the province is ready for any eventuality.
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“We have not seen a case of monkeypox in Africa. If we find ourselves faced with such a case, we certainly have enough isolation beds available. We created a lot of isolation beds at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s very easy for us to revert back to isolation beds across the different facilities, ” she said.
MEC Simelane was speaking on the sidelines of the Department’s Post-Budget Stakeholder Engagement programme. She reiterated the national communique issued by the National Health Director-General Dr Sandile Buthelezi this week, which stated that there have been no laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox in the country and on the continent.
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In a statement issued on May 23, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) confirmed that there were no monkeypox cases in South Africa. The NCID said the first case in the current outbreak was recorded on May 4 after a traveller returned to the United Kingdom from Nigeria.
“On May 13, the World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of two laboratory-confirmed cases and one probable case of monkeypox, from the same household, in the United Kingdom,” said NCID.
According to the NCID, 15 countries have collectively reported more than 140 cases of monkeypox.
The NCID said hand hygiene, by using soap and water or alcohol-based sanitiser, should be emphasised.
“The NICD is equipped to test for monkeypox as the Centre for Emerging, Zoonotic and Parasitic Diseases (CEZPD) has a diagnostic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in place and electron-microscopy capacity,” said Dr Jacqueline Weyer from the Special Viral Pathogens Division at the CEZPD.
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