Govt Convenes Meeting Of Experts On Monkeypox

A meeting of top health experts called by the Centre on the need for revisiting existing guidelines on management of Monkeypox is under way here amid rising number of cases of the disease in the country.India has so far reported nine cases of Monkeypox including one death."This is a technical meeting to revisit the existing guidelines," an official said.

The meeting is being chaired by Dr L Swasticharan, director of Emergency Medical Relief and is being attended by officials from the National Aids Control Organisation, National Centre for Disease Control and World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives.

According to existing 'Guidelines on Management of Monkeypox Disease' issued by the Centre, any person having a history of travel to affected countries within the last 21 days presenting with an unexplained acute rash and symptoms like swollen lymph nodes, fever, headaches, body aches and profound weakness is to be considered to be a 'suspected case'.

A 'probable case' has to be a person meeting the case definition for a suspected case, clinically compatible illness and has an epidemiological link like face-to-face exposure, including health care workers without appropriate PPE, direct physical contact with skin or skin lesions, including sexual contact, or contact with contaminated material such as clothing, bedding or utensils.

A case is considered laboratory confirmed for Monkeypox virus by detection of unique sequences of viral DNA either by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and/or sequencing. Defining contacts, the guidelines stated that a contact is defined as a person who, in the period beginning with the onset of the source case's first symptoms, and ending when all scabs have fallen off, has had one or more of the exposures face-to-face exposure, direct physical contact, including sexual contact, contact with contaminated materials such as clothing or bedding with a probable or confirmed case of Monkeypox.

(PTI)