Peru doctors 'concerned' by rising monkeypox cases

Peru has the highest number of monkeypox patients in Latin America and the second highest in South America, according to Peru's Medical Association.

"We are quite concerned here, in Peru. We are insisting (on campaigns)," the association's infectious disease physician Leslie Soto said on Tuesday.

Arzobispo Loayza Lima's hospital is currently receiving the largest number of smallpox cases in Peru, 834 so far since the first known case less than two months ago.

The hospital's infectiologists have begun to draw hypotheses to find the reasons for the rapid expansion of smallpox.

Based on the documentation of 114 people infected with monkeypox, doctors at Archbishop Loayza say that about 90% have HIV, and almost all of them are men, except for one female health worker who was accidentally infected.

"It's not just about penetrative sex, but foreplay, in which there is intimate contact, might play a significant role in the case-to-case transmissions," said Aldo Lucchetti, Infectious disease physician at the hospital.

The doctor added that they are also analyzing whether a local custom of using the same glass for drinking liquor during group drinking could influence the observed rapid transmission.

Most of them have small lesions that are treated in home isolation, so there are no fatal cases or referrals taken to the intensive care unit.

Only one patient who abandoned his HIV treatment and suffered from tuberculosis died in early August due to septicemia.

Authorities have specified that monkeypox is transmitted "by close contact with lesions, it can also be transmitted by skin contact during sexual intercourse.

It can also be transmitted by respiratory droplets and contaminated materials, such as bedding".

Smallpox is not a new disease; it has been known since at least the 1970s.

Since May, nearly 90 countries have reported more than 36,000 cases of monkeypox. WHO classified the outbreak of the disease as an international emergency in July.