By Bill W. Cooper
The Director of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), Dugbeh Chris Nyan, has announced that the country has detected the presence of the Monkeypox virus Clade-IIa.
Dr. Nyan emphasized that health authorities are closely monitoring the situation to determine the virus’ severity and potential threat to public health despite the fact that there has been no death since the Mpox outbreak in the country.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are two distinct clades of the Mpox virus: clade I (with subclades Ia and Ib) and clade II (with subclades IIa and IIb), as in 2022–2023 a global outbreak of virus was caused by the clade IIb strain.
But addressing a news conference on Sunday at his NPHIL office in Congo Town, Dr. Nyan disclosed that the Mpox Virus Clade-IIa was established after following testing of samples sent to the US-CDC and Nigeria to identify the current string of the virus in Liberia.
While the Clade-IIa variant has been identified, the NPHIL boss also reassured the public that there is currently no evidence to suggest it poses an immediate life-threatening risk.
According to him, health officials from the Ministry of Health and NPHIL are currently conducting extensive surveillance and contact tracing to mitigate any potential outbreaks.
Dr. Nyan, at the same time is urging citizens to remain vigilant and practice good hygiene, as they continue to assess the situation, pledging the government’s commitment to keeping the public inform as more information becomes available regarding the virus’s impact in Liberia.
Meanwhile, Dr. Nyan has also disclosed that the country is currently having five active cases of the Mpox virus disease, and revealed that of the five active cases, three are newly recorded cases (two from Bong and one from Grand Bassa Counties).
He maintained that the five active cases now bring the total number to 17 cases recorded since January of this year, and 11 since August (two months ago) across the country.
He noted, “We have had 11 cases since August, since the outbreak was announced. Currently we can announce three new cases since the last announcement the other day. Two of those cases are from Bong and one is from Grand Bassa. The three new cases bring the total number of active cases to five.
And of the two cases in Bong, one is a one-month-old baby and the other is a one-year-old baby. Their mothers created situation, which were concerning; it’s alarming. They had symptoms of monkey pox but managed to recover because the disease is self-limited.
So, we are asking the public to take this very seriously. We have an Mpox disease and Monkey pox virus that have been declared as an outbreak. I hope that people in the medical area do not doubt this information as well,” he intoned.
Dr. Nyan, added, “Epidemiological respondents are being trained. We have had sequencing training. Sequencing tells or makes you to know what the gene of the disease looks like. It allows us to know what we have in country by the generic look of the virus.”
