The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), on Friday, disclosed that 12 African countries have so far reported 1,782 cases of monkeypox.
Acting Director of Africa CDC, Ahmed Ogwell, during a weekly briefing, said out of the 1,782 cases of monkeypox that had been reported in Africa, 1,678 of them were suspected cases while 104 were confirmed.
He said the cases had been reported in both monkeypox, endemic and non-endemic countries highlighting that Benin, Morocco, and South Africa were the non-endemic African Union (AU) members reporting confirmed cases of the disease.
“Unfortunately, 73 deaths have been reported in the continent as a result of the monkeypox outbreak, bringing the case fatality rate of the disease to 4.1 percent,” Ogwell said.
He also said the Africa CDC was offering training to 20 health experts drawn from different parts of the continent in Nigeria to help them build the capacity of making a laboratory diagnosis for monkeypox in their respective countries.
According to the acting director, the Africa CDC’s Institute for Pathogen Genomics is also working on sequencing samples of monkeypox so that it will be able to identify and document any variant that could occur in any AU member.
