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Rabat – While health services across Morocco remain on high alert to monitor suspected cases of Monkeypox following the country’s first — and so far only — confirmed case detected earlier this month, Morocco’s Ministry of Health said on Tuesday that the monkeypox situation is “still under control.”
Minister Khalid Ait Taleb made the reassuring comments while speaking about the overall situation of monkeypox in Morocco in response to questions from MPs at the House of Councilors.
In addition to the confirmed case Morocco detected earlier this month, the North African country is now tackling one more suspected case, he explained.
“The detection of monkeypox in Morocco is done by clinical and laboratory diagnosis,” Ait Taleb said, emphasizing that there are four laboratories tackling the process: The national prevention laboratory, the military laboratory in Rabat, the military laboratory of Marrakech, and the Pasteur Institute in Casablanca.
The minister believes it is unnecessary to increase the number of the laboratories tackling monkeypox “because the disease is not widespread and the situation is under control.”
Ait Taleb recalled the mechanism Morocco has put in place to tackle the potential outbreak of the virus, saying that his department benefited from the anti-COVID campaign that has enabled the country and its health personnel to deal with viruses and diseases through vigilance and monitoring prior to diagnosis.
“A plan has been developed at the regional level to track potential cases,” the minister said, emphasizing that the Health Ministry has already put in place units at border crossings to easily diagnose suspected monkeypox cases.
In the event of a suspected case, the ministry takes a set of preventive measures, including confinement.
“These measures consist of confining infected people to their homes and treating them according to their symptoms. There is no special treatment for monkeypox,” Ait Taleb explained.
Morocco detected its first monkeypox case earlier this month, with the ministry stressing that the case was imported from abroad.
Seven suspected cases have since tested negative, and authorities across the country remain on alert to track and confine contacts of suspected cases.
The symptoms of Monkeypox include intense headache, back pain, swollen lymph nodes, skin rash, among others. The symptoms could last between two days to a month.
