South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
The national public health laboratory has confirmed that all the 87 suspected cases of Mpox (Monkeypox) tested negative.
Yolanda Awel Deng, Minister of Health said that the samples were collected from 10 States.
“They have been tested and we have found them negative,” Awel said during the four-day voluntary donation drive held in Juba on Sunday.
“And then now we have got one test that is going on. So maybe hoping today or tomorrow we will get the result,” she added.
Awel said that they are upgrading the national public health laboratory with modern equipment to improve the capacity to test any suspected cases of any disease.
She disclosed that the national public health laboratory has been accredited to test all samples from other countries.
“Now countries like Sudan are actually sending in some of their samples and some other countries because our lab is accredited,” Awel said.
Awel noted that the national public health laboratory now has the same standard as the rest of Africa’s health laboratories.
“We have got today here the main senior virologist, the main one that we have in the country, whom you have seen early on,” she said.
According to WHO, Mpox is a viral illness caused by the monkeypox virus, a species of the genus orthopoxvirus.
Mpox was first discovered in humans in 1970 in the DRC.
It has since been mainly limited to certain West and Central African nations, with people mainly catching it from infected animals, such as when eating bush meat.
The common symptoms include skin rash and mucosal lesions which can take at least 2-4 weeks, accompanied by fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, low energy, and swollen lymph nodes.
