Although they have no confirmed cases, Ecuador decreed this Friday a preventive epidemiological alert situation due to the increase in cases of severe acute childhood hepatitis that has been registered in some countries.
The Ecuadorian government made the decision following the alert issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the face of this outbreak of hepatitis, whose origin is unknown.
The state of alert in Ecuador is “to define and see how the surveillance of this hepatitis will be operationalized,” explained the Undersecretary of Health Surveillance of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Public Health (MSP), Francisco Pérez.
The official explained that the alert tries to generate a regulatory framework so that possible cases can be investigated and “adequate follow-up can be given and the procedure prepared in case a child needs a transplant.”
As the origin is unknown, Pérez stated that it is difficult to establish scales that certify the confirmed cases with certainty.
The first case of acute childhood hepatitis in Latin America it was reported this week in Panama and corresponds to a two-year-old boy, who is currently out of danger following his hospitalization.
In other countries such as Argentina, Puerto Rico and Brazil, health personnel study some suspicious cases of the pathology.
This type of childhood hepatitis was first reported in the UK in October 2021 and since then 348 possible cases have been reported globally in 21 countries, including 26 children who required a liver transplant.
In fifteen of the countries where they occurred, it has been reported that their incidence is 5 or fewer cases, while a dozen cases have already been reported on the American continent.
