The Government of Brazil confirmed this Friday the first death in the country from monkeypox, a 41-year-old man with serious immunity problems who was undergoing cancer treatment. It is the first death of the current outbreak recorded in America. According to health authorities, he was hospitalized in Belo Horizonte and died on Thursday. At the moment, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed five deaths worldwide, according to the latest balance, released on Thursday.
Brazil already has 1,066 cases of the disease, the vast majority in the State of São Paulo. In fact, this week the city hall of the São Paulo capital confirmed the first cases of monkeypox in minors, two six-year-old girls and a four-year-old boy.
The Brazilian Ministry of Health is treating the disease as an outbreak, the first phase in the evolution of the contagion, prior to the epidemic and the pandemic, although the ministry’s Secretary of Health Surveillance, Arnaldo Medeiros, said Thursday that it is time to raise the alert level. “The first cases were imported, they had a clear relationship with travel to countries with active outbreaks, but today in Brazil we already have community transmission. It is important that people, when they feel any symptoms, look for their basic health unit, ”he recommended.
Precisely this Friday, the Ministry of Health launched an emergency operation center to monitor the epidemiological situation and develop a vaccination plan against the disease in the country. In parallel, the purchase of vaccines is being negotiated. The forecast is that Brazil will receive 50,000 doses, based on an order made to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The first immunizers will be destined for health professionals and although there is still no date for the release of the vaccines, they are expected to arrive before the end of the year.
The illness usually begins with a fever, fatigue, headache, or muscle aches, and skin lesions appear one to five days later. Normally, these are small reddish spots that appear first on the face and then spread to other parts of the body, and are accompanied by itching and enlarged lymph nodes. According to the WHO, at the moment only 10% of patients had to be hospitalized for the disease, which already totals more than 18,000 cases worldwide.
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