Mpox patient on road to recovery, says health official

PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s first confirmed mpox patient, Syed Muslim, 34, has largely recovered but is still quarantined and being monitored by the health experts in Mardan, an official said on Wednesday.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad had released a report of the patient that confirmed strain of the virus as Clade II.The mpox patient, who was diagnosed with the viral infection at the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) in Peshawar, had escaped from the hospital where he was admitted for treatment of his fractured leg.

Syed Muslim had returned from Saudi Arabia on August 10, 2024, where he suffered a leg fracture and returned to Pakistan to seek treatment.He had been taken to KTH for treatment, but in the meantime he had some skin issues where the doctors sought the option of the dermatologists.The dermatologists got suspicious when they examined the patient.

They took his samples and dispatched to the NIH in Islamabad where he was diagnosed with mpox on August 13.The patient panicked when he noted that the doctors and nursing staff had taken extraordinary precautionary measures. This frightened him and he escaped with the help of his attendants.

It rang alarm bells as the case was already reported all over the world and Pakistan was in the headlines in the world media for being the first country to report the first confirmed positive case of mpox in 2024.

It became a huge challenge for the government, particularly the Health Department, to locate the patient, as there were apprehensions that he might infect other people around him.Since the patient belonged to Mardan, Dr Javed Iqbal, DHO Mardan and his team were tasked to trace the patient.

He alerted everybody he knew in his circles when he visited the family house of the patient and found him absent there.Since the patient originally belonged to Lower Dir district in the Malakand Division and had moved to Mardan, the health authorities of Lower Dir were also alerted, but they failed to trace him.

District Health Officer, Dr Javed Iqbal told The News that he approached the brother of the patient and told them that it was in the interest of the patient and his family to cooperate with the government.

The efforts yielded results and the patient was surrendered to Dr Javed Iqbal and his team.They properly examined him and assured the patient and his family that they would not show him to the media.

“It was a big risk for the public as he could have spread the disease to other people in his vicinity,” he added. The DHO said that the condition of the patient had improved but he was still isolated from other family members in his residence.

He said they had educated the wife and other family members and given them personal protective equipment and medicine. The patient was regularly visited by the team of health experts, he added

Manga was the village in Mardan that reported Pakistan’s first positive Covid-19 case, Sadat Khan, 50, in 2020.He was also the first patient, who died of Covid-19 in Pakistan.

Also, both Sadat Khan and Syed Muslim, had returned from Saudi Arabia when they fell sick of the viral infection.“The patient has been isolated in a house where his wife is properly taking care of him, but the health experts are visiting him every day. His wife has not developed any symptoms but we educated her about the disease and its protocol,” the Health Department official said.

Dr Javed Iqbal said that unlike the Covid, to which the elderly people were at high risk, they are safe from the mpox virus as the majority of them were vaccinated against smallpox in the 1970s.

“Whoever is vaccinated against smallpox is safe from mpox virus. Also, the Nigerian strain of the virus isn’t dangerous as 95 to 97 percent of the patients are self-cured,” said Dr Javed Iqbal.

Unlike the Covid, he said another positive development in mpox was availability of the medicine of the disease.Meanwhile, the provincial Health Department has declared the Police General Hospital in Peshawar as a dedicated hospital for mpox patients.

There were reports in the media that the KP Health Department had requested the World Health Organisation (WHO) to provide them vaccines for mpox, but DG Health and Services Dr Salim Khan denied these reports.He said they did not make any such demand, saying how can they demand the vaccine when it was not available in the market.