The Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed a fourth case of Mpox in Kenya.
The new case was confirmed in Nakuru County and following earlier detections in Taita Taveta, Busia and Nairobi counties.
Public Health and Professional Standards Principal Secretary Mary Muthoni said on Saturday, August 31 the ministry tested a total of 90 samples for Mpox, with two still under analysis.
She revealed that 30 contacts are under follow-up in Busia, Mombasa, Nairobi, and Nakuru.
MOH is conducting surveillance and screening of travellers at Kenya’s designated Ports of Entry and has, in the last 24 hours, screened 16,533 people.
The total number of screens at all 26 Ports of Entry now stands at 582,000 individuals.
Emergent BioSolutions says it’s donating 50,000 doses of its smallpox vaccine to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other impacted countries.
The countries are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to address the current mpox pox outbreak.
Emergent’s ACAM2000 vaccine, which is approved for smallpox, is used as a mpox shot.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is yet to approve its application for use against the virus.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ACAM2000, a live, replicating virus vaccine has multiple side effects.
ACAM2000 is known to cause myocarditis/pericarditis.
It causes swelling in or around the heart muscle – in 1 in 175 new ACAM2000 vaccine recipients, according to the FDA.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the increase of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and other countries in Africa constitutes a public health emergency.
