Women who test positive for monkeypox in the UK should have a caesarean section and be isolated from their newborn children, according to the latest advice. There have now been more than 300 cases of the once-rare tropical disease in the UK.
The new guidelines also recommend infected women avoid breastfeeding as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health warn the virus is more severe in children.
New advice published in the journal Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynaecology, reads: "The virus can be transmitted via contact with open monkeypox lesions. Given that infants appear to be at the greatest risk of severe monkeypox infection, if lesions are identified, a Caesarean section should be recommended.
