Bureau Report
New Delhi: India on Thursday reported its first case of monkeypox, Priya Abraham, head of National Institute of Virology, told Reuters.
Monkeypox, endemic in parts of Africa, is a viral disease that causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will reconvene its monkeypox experts to decide if the worsening outbreak now constitutes a global public health emergency, its chief said last week.
The UN health agency’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he would hold a second meeting of the emergency committee on monkeypox, with more than 6,000 cases now confirmed in 58 countries. A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.
“I continue to be concerned by the scale and spread of the virus,” Tedros told a press conference from the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva.
“Testing remains a challenge and it’s highly probable that there are a significant number of cases not being picked up.
