C-sections for women with monkeypox

PREGNANT women with monkeypox will be advised to have C-sections and be separated from their baby in hospital.

Doctors hope the new guidance will reduce the risk of mothers infecting their babies during labour or after delivery.

It comes as the UK Health Security Agency yesterday reported a further 73 cases of monkeypox in the UK, taking the total to 302. The guidelines also recommend that infected women avoid breastfeeding amid fears this could act as another route of transmission.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which contributed to the guidelines, warn the virus is more severe in children.

Published in the journal Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynaecology, the review says: ‘The virus can be transmitted via contact with open monkeypox lesions. It is likely, therefore, that labour and/or vaginal birth in a woman with genital lesions may lead to neonatal infection.

‘Given that infants appear to be at the greatest risk of severe monkeypox infection, if lesions are identified, a Caesarean section should be recommended.

‘Even if genital lesions cannot be identified in a woman with confirmed or likely monkeypox infection, Caesarean section should be offered.’

It adds that babies who test negative for monkeypox should be isolated from their positive mothers until both test negative or positive, at which point they can be reunited.