Cape Town - With five reported cases of monkeypox in South Africa, health expert and member of the People’s Health Movement Professor Louis Reynolds has cautioned over acting with haste at the expense of crucial health programmes.
On Friday, Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla confirmed that five cases of monkeypox were reported, with the most recent case that of a 28-year-old man from Johannesburg, Gauteng, with a travel history to the Netherlands and Spain.
“These pandemics and health crises are going to continue,” Reynolds said.
“If our response as a nation is to run around, dropping everything to respond to each pandemic and the slight differences it has with the previous pandemic, we will keep getting sidetracked from developing our health system.
“This would divert resources from routine programmes such as TB, HIV, childhood immunisation and rehabilitation, etc.
“So the hard, painstaking work of developing an equitable, fair health system that delivers good healthcare is what we should be doing in the background. The drug companies will try to capitalise on every crisis.”
A 28-year-old man from Constantia, Cape Town, with a recent travel history to Spain was the fourth case nationally, and a second for the Western Cape.
The first case in the province was detected in Cape Town’s CBD.
Phaahla said the first four cases were not linked, however teams were trying to establish if there is a link between the fourth and fifth case.
In terms of the fourth case, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases’ senior communications manager, Sinenhlanhla Jimoh, said the individual returned to South Africa on August 12 after staying in Barcelona for about two weeks.
Although most cases were mild in symptoms, and monkeypox is less contagious than smallpox and Covid-19, the rise in the number of positive cases was becoming a cause for concern, Phaahla said.
He said there was no specific vaccine for monkeypox although there were currently three main vaccines (ACAM2000, Jynneos/Imvanex and LC16m8) in use worldwide. None are registered in South Africa.
South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) spokesperson Yuven Gounden said Sahpra has not put out any calls for applications.