Add to your list of foreign invaders a new one: monkeypox, a smallpox relative fresh in from Nigeria. Caused by a virus of the Orthopoxvirus genus in the family Poxviridae, monkeypox was first discovered in 1958. The first human case of the disease came a few years later, in 1970, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, monkeypox has been reported in humans in various central and western African countries.
No one knows where the reservoir of the virus is located, but scientists suspect a species of African rodents. Symptoms of the disease include fever, headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen lymph nodes, chills, exhaustion, and a skin rash. The CDC says there are currently no safe treatments. The disease is fatal in 1 to 10 percent of cases.
While cases have generally been restricted to Central and West Africa, a few have been reported in the U.K., and the United States suffered an outbreak in 2003 among 47 persons exposed to a shipment of animals imported from Ghana.
And then there’s today. The Centers for Disease Control is reporting that a “Texas man” on July 8 traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, to the U.S., stopping off in Atlanta. The next day, he traveled on another flight to Dallas, where he was hospitalized. Authorities are now monitoring more than 200 individuals who may have had contact with the traveler en route. So far, none have been found to have the disease and none are considered “high risk.”
For more, see the BBC website.