The Ogun state government has made it known that there is no recorded case of Monkey Pox in the state. The state’s Commissioner for Health, Babatunde Ipaye, made this known at a press conference on Tuesday.
According to Ipaye, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) declaration of 31 suspected cases of monkey pox in the state is due to the “unprofessional attitude of an overzealous official” of the state Ministry of Health who reported the case without proper investigation.
“The distribution of the rashes on the patient’s skin is never suggestive of a monkeypox and no due process was completed before the case was reported.
“We are not averse to reporting any genuine case of monkey pox but we must also be careful not to create unnecessary fear among the people.
“It is very surprising to me as the state Commissioner for Health and the Chief Epidemiologist of the state to see Ogun among the listed states.
“We have not recorded any confirmed case of monkeypox in the state; Ogun doesn’t have a single case.
“Yes, there was an overzealous officer of the ministry who saw somebody with skin lesion in state hospital, Ijebu-Ode, and unfortunately called the Federal Ministry of Health and reported it as a suspected case.
“Any patient in such situation cannot be considered as a suspected case because the patient has another primary problem that can give rise to skin lesion, which is not a suspected case.
“We have seen classically that the distribution of rashes in monkeypox tend to be more on the face and symbolically at the palm and the sole of the feet.
“This patient does not have any of such and when we did a secondary screening, we discovered that there is even a primary reason why the patient had the rash,” he said.