A 41-year-old man with monkeypox has died in Brazil, the first death from the disease outside Africa and the sixth overall, local authorities said on Friday.
A man “suffering from monkeypox and being followed in hospital for other serious clinical conditions died on Thursday,” the health ministry of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais said.
The patient, who according to local media had serious immunity problems, died at the Eduardo de Menezes Hospital in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais.
According to the Ministry of Health, Brazil has registered nearly 1,000 cases of monkeypox, most of them in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, also located in the southeast of the country. The first case was detected on June 10, in a man who had traveled to Europe.
More than 18,000 cases worldwide
Early symptoms of the disease include a high fever, swollen lymph nodes, and a chickenpox-like rash.
On Saturday, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued the highest level of alert, the Public Health Emergency of International Concern, to step up the fight against monkeypox.
According to the WHO, more than 18,000 cases of monkeypox have been detected worldwide since early May outside of endemic areas in Africa.
The disease has been reported in 78 countries and 70% of the cases are concentrated in Europe and 25% in the Americas, the director of the organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday.
Source: BFM TV
