Monkeypox fears rise in Latin America

Monkeypox is causing growing concerns after embedding itself in 11 Latin American countries.

Data gathered by the Pan American Health Organization, or PAHO, showed that community infection is starting to take place.

"Argentina was the first country to report a monkeypox case in Latin America, on May 23, and there are already nine cases in Argentina alone, all of them with epidemiological links, especially to Europe," said Carlos Di Pietrantonio, a medical doctor and epidemiology specialist in Buenos Aires.

Since mid-May, there have been more than 1,300 cases of monkeypox in the Americas, including the United States and Canada, PAHO said. In Latin America, the most cases are logged in Brazil with 219 cases and Mexico with 35, said PAHO during a news conference on Wednesday.

Apart from these two countries, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and the Bahamas have also reported cases.

"It is important to mention that in many countries of the region, where we have properly characterized information, the proportion of cases without travel is increasing week after week, and this increases our concern for more sustained transmission," said Sylvain Aldighieri, incident manager at PAHO, during the news conference.

Aldighieri said 94 percent of confirmed cases in Mexico are male patients and 60 percent of the cases are people living with HIV. He also said the group most affected by monkeypox is people aged between 30 and 49.

People over the age of 55 in the region could be safer from monkeypox because of a mass vaccination campaign against the disease between 1978 and 1980, Di Pietrantonio said.

"It seems the outbreak has not been contained, and the rate of infection has been increasing as the epidemiological weeks progress," said Sebastian Ugarte, director of the Critical Care Medicine Program at Andres Bello University in the Chilean capital Santiago. "Although the number of cases has not reached the volume of winter respiratory diseases, which is the main concern right now in the southern cone, the numbers (of monkeypox disease) are increasing."

There are over 9,200 people affected by monkeypox across 63 countries, according to the latest available international data.

The author is a freelance writer for China Daily.