The Singapore Health Minisry on May 9 confirmed that a Nigerian who had arrived in the city on April 28 had the rare disease, monkeypox.
What is Monkeypox?
- Monkeypox virus (MPXV) is an orthopoxvirus that causes a viral disease with symptoms in humans similar, but milder, to those seen in smallpox patients.
- Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, whereas human monkeypox is endemic in villages of Central and West Africa.
- The occurrence of cases is often found close to tropical rainforests where there is frequent contact with infected animals. There is no evidence to date that person-to-person transmission alone can sustain monkeypox in the human population.
- Monkeypox is a rare viral zoonotic disease that occurs primarily in remote parts of central and west Africa, near tropical rainforests.
- The monkeypox virus is similar to human smallpox, a disease that has been eradicated in 1980. Although monkeypox is much milder than smallpox, it can be fatal.
- The monkeypox virus is mostly transmitted to people from various wild animals such as rodents and primates, but has limited secondary spread through human-to-human transmission.
- Typically, case fatality in monkeypox outbreaks has been between 1% and 10%, with most deaths occurring in younger age groups.
- There is no specific treatment or vaccine available although prior smallpox vaccination was highly effective in preventing monkeypox as well.
- Human monkeypox was first identified in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then known as Zaire) in a 9 -year -old boy in a region where smallpox had been eliminated in 1968. Since then, the majority of cases have been reported in rural, rainforest regions of the Congo Basin and western Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it is considered to be endemic. In 1996–97, a major outbreak occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
