Discovery of a fresh MPX case in the provincial capital by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa healthdepartment, the province’s overall zoonotic sickness patient count this year comes to six.
On Monday the 35-year-old patient was diagnosed positive for the illness at Public Health Reference Laboratory, Khyber Medical University.
On March 4 at the dermatology OPD of Khyber Teaching Hospital, 42-year-old husband was diagnosed positive for mpox. The KTH dermatology department chairman, Dr Mehran Khan, examined him.
He stayed at home under quarantine, but his wife turned at the OPD where the same dermatologist recommended a test; she came out positive.
When her husband tested positive, experts told Dawn the lady showed no symptoms at the time. She reportedly started symptoms later, hence most likely she got the virus from her husband before being quarantined.
Over three years, KP has recorded fifteen cases of the condition.
“It is also likely that the woman has been sick with the sickness since she followed preventative steps. Her husband is negative for the disease right now, they stated.
According to experts, KTH diagnosed three cases of mpox in the current month. Positive cases, they warned, had to be kept apart from other people in homes or hospitals. Once diagnosed positive, the patients should stay in quarantine until they fully recover; then, they could be let to meet others depending on tests.
“The patient has now come under close observation by the health authorities, which has advised her to avoid persons living in her house. Otherwise, the sickness can be passed on to others, they stated. They also mentioned that the tendency was risky and that if patients kept going against doctor advice on isolation, the sickness could start to circulate in the community.
To see whether the infection had been passed on to others, officials of the directorate of public health at the Director-General Health Services began closely monitoring patient close contacts.
So far, the province reports 15 mpox cases: six in 2025, seven in 2024, two in 2023. Most of the patients arrived from either United Arab Emirate or Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the disease was endemic.
Authorities have begun screening UAE and KSA arriving passengers at Bacha Khan International Airport; suspicious individuals are being transported to an isolation ward at Service Hospital where specific measures have been set in place for this use.
Officials said: “We send samples of patients to the laboratory for test; patients are released from hospital in case they emerge negative; the positive ones are isolated.”
All patients, they claimed, had the virus thus far, which could have come from UAE or KSA. The most recent instance involves local infection from his husband. Other patients had nothing to do with local infection; they were infected from sources overseas.
“All patients are isolated and released only when their tests come back negative per policy,” they stated.
Officials claimed that as individuals kept distance from patients, there was great awareness among them, which resulted in zero risks of local spread of the disease.
