Ghana has recorded its first confirmed case of mpox in 2024, health authorities said on Thursday, as the virus continues to spread in Africa. The patient, a young boy from the Western North Region—about 475 kilometers (295.1 miles) from the capital Accra—showed symptoms of the virus including a rash, fever, and body pains, the director-general of Ghana Health Service (GHS) Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said in a statement.
While the child has since been discharged and is in a table condition, officials have identified and are monitoring 25 people who were in contact with him. "The suspected case of mpox was isolated in line with protocols for managing mpox," Kuma-Aboagye said. About 230 other suspected cases are being investigated in the West African country, GHS sources told AFP on Thursday.
More than 860 people have died from some 34,297 cases recorded across Africa since January, Jean Kaseya, the head of Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said at a press briefing on Thursday afternoon, adding that "we have a new country that declared mpox this week...
38 (cases), that is Ghana." The virus has two subtypes of the virus: clade 1 and clade 2. The deadlier clade 1 has been endemic in the Congo Basin in central Africa for decades.
Although GHS did not divulge which clade of the virus was detected, the less severe clade 2 has become endemic in parts of West Africa. The country saw a total of eight cases in 2023 and 120 in 2022. Several African nations, inc.