Peru registered this Monday the first death of a person infected with monkeypox, at a time when cases of contagion exceeded 300 in the country, reported a health authority.
It is about “a patient who arrived at the hospital with monkeypox in extremely serious condition and whose health had weakened after abandoning his treatment for HIV/AIDS”said the director of the Dos de Mayo National Hospital, Eduardo Farfán, after confirming the death to RPP radio.
“The patient has not died of monkeypox but of septicemia” caused by having a weak immune system, added the director of the hospital, located in Lima.
The patient, a 45-year-old man, had been hospitalized on Wednesday “heavily infected” with monkeypox and “the germs that swarmed through the skin compressed his lungs.”
“The problem is that it was a patient with other morbidities”, that made him more vulnerable and decompensated, “said Farfán. The fatal outcome of this case of monkeypox was known when the infections of this viral disease amounted to 305 , according to figures released on Sunday.
This would be the fifth fatal case involving the virus outside of Africa, after two deaths in Spain, one in Brazil and one in India. However, it has not been clearly established whether the cause of the rest of the deaths was smallpox.
Monkeypox is considered a rare viral disease transmitted by close contact with an infected person and skin lesions.
The national hospital Dos de Mayo receives between eight and nine cases per day of people with monkeypox, and in general its treatment is outpatient, according to its director.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP