No case of #monkeypox in Ogun —Health Commissioner

October 10, 2017

2019: Aspirant sues for peace and unity among Ogun West contenders

The Ogun State Commissioner for Health, Dr Babatunde Ipaye, on Tuesday, debunked a news report that the case of monkeypox has been discovered in the state.

The Commissioner expressed his displeasure over the news item and faulted an official of the state for reporting the case to the Federal Ministry of Health without proper examination.

Ipaye explained this to newsmen in Abeokuta, the state capital, to clear the air on the issue, maintaining that monkeypox case had not been incidented in the state.

He described the officer as overzealous, saying that the officer attached to the State Hospital, Ijebu-Ode, only noticed skin lesion on a patient who was brought in for medical attention and summarily classified it as a case of monkey pox disease.

The commissioner added that the case in no way could be qualified as a suspected case of the viral disease in the real sense of it.

ALSO READ: Monkeypox hits Akwa Ibom, panic in South-East, South-South

He explained further that the state government was not in anyway trying to cover up any case as regard the disease, but said that due process was not followed before the case was reported to the Federal Government.

“It was very surprising as the State Commissioner for Health and the Chief Epidemiologist of the state to hear that Ogun State was listed. We have not incidented any confirmed case of monkeypox in the state. Ogun State does not have a single case at hand.

“Yes, there was an overzealous officer of the Ministry who saw somebody with skin lesion in state hospital, Ijebu-Ode and unfortunately called the Federal Ministry of Health and incidented suspected case.

“Any patient in the category of that patient that was incidented can not be considered as a suspected case because the patient has another primary problem that can give rise to skin lesion, that is not a suspected case.

“Further questioning was even very revealing that the skin lesion the patient had was not even pathognomonic of monkeypox, it was not suggestive of monkeypox but more of another skin lesion and the screening revealed that, that negates the entire report itself.

“We are not averse to reporting one, if there is a case, and we are not willing to cover up a case but we must also not sent people panicking for things that we do not have.

“We have seen, classically the distribution of rash in monkey pox is that the rashes tends to be more on the face and symbolically at the palm and the sole of the feet, this patient has neither of those and when we did a secondary screening, we discovered that there’s even a primary reason why the patient had the rash.”

On what the State is doing to prevent the spread of the disease to the state, Ipaye said the government would continue to engage in public awareness.

WATCH TOP VIDEOS FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE TV