Jakarta, IO – The Health Ministry (Kemenkes) confirmed that one monkeypox patient has died at Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital (RSCM) Jakarta.
Lie Khie Chen, internal medicine specialist with a subspecialist in tropical and infectious diseases at RSCM, said that the patient’s condition continued to deteriorate after he was admitted. However, he said the patient died because of comorbidities, not because of monkeypox, per CNN Indonesia Friday (24/11).
“This patient did have complications. So, he was indeed in a problematic condition and had to undergo a surgery at RSCM,” explained Kie Chen. “So, the patient’s condition that led to his death was not due to monkeypox at all but other comorbidities.”
This was confirmed by Achmad Farchanny Tri Adryanto, Kemenkes’s health quarantine and surveillance director at the Directorate General of Disease Prevention and Control (P2P).
Achmad noted that to date the number of monkeypox patients in Indonesia has reached 57 as of Wednesday (22/11). Of this figure, 33 patients have been declared recovered.
So far, there are eight people who are displaying symptoms of monkeypox and 191 others who were in the suspect category but declared negative based on the PCR test results.
Achmad explained that all monkeypox patients are men aged between 18 to 50. He said that most of them are men who have sex with men.
He also revealed that the majority of monkeypox patients currently have comorbidities such as HIV, hypertension and tuberculosis. Of the 57 patients, 39 of them had HIV.
“There were 16 cases of syphilis, two cases of hypertension, two cases of HSV, and two cases of active TB,” Fachranny elaborated. (un)