Monkeypox, Bassetti: “It’s no longer just a Congo problem. We need to intervene”
The World Health Organization has warned about monkeypox, triggering an international state of emergency. No sooner had the potential risks been announced than the first case arrived in Europe, in Sweden in particular. The person in question was infected during a trip to Africa. Mpox is transmitted by air, skin and sexual contact and can reach a mortality rate of 4%. “I think the situation is serious, but there is no reason to be alarmed: the risk of infection is low. We are well prepared and the health services have good procedures in place. It is a known disease. There are vaccines and we have vaccines in stock,” stressed the Swedish Minister of Health, Jakob Forssmed.
Professor Matteo Bassetti, director of the infectious diseases department at the San Martino Polyclinic Hospital in Genoa, is also on the same page. “We have already seen monkeypox,” Bassetti told Ansa, “but today the clinical manifestations are different, the disease is more serious and more virulent and for this reason we must be careful and make early diagnoses. We will all be much more careful,” he continued, “with this Clade1 variant the epidemiology of monkeypox has changed. Before, it was related to people who were more at risk, now it concerns much broader targets. The spectrum of this disease is expanding to other subjects. We must,” Bassetti concluded, “raise awareness all over the world. It is no longer a problem of the People’s Republic of Congo. The tests are there, the same ones already used in 2022 when the disease arrived. The target has changed but we are equipped.”
