Monitoring the first infection with a virus sourced from monkeys..a rare disease without a vaccine

On Saturday, the British Health Security Agency announced that it had detected the first case of monkeypox in England.

And the agency indicated, in a statement published on the British government website, that the patient was recently on a visit to Nigeria, where he is believed to have contracted the infection, before returning to Britain.

The agency added that the patient is receiving the necessary medical care in the Infectious Diseases Unit at the Guy and St Thomas Foundation of the British National Health Authority in London.
And the agency pointed out that it is communicating with all people who have recently dealt directly with the infected person, as a precautionary measure to prevent further spread of infection and to provide them with information about the disease, adding that this includes a number of passengers who traveled with the infected person on the same flight to Britain.

The agency pointed out that monkeypox is a rare viral infection that does not spread easily between humans, and symptoms are usually mild and heal on their own, and most people recover within a few weeks, but it may sometimes cause severe illness in some infected people.

The World Health Organization defines monkeypox as “a rare disease that occurs mainly in remote areas of central and western Africa near tropical rainforests”.

The monkeypox virus is transmitted to humans from a variety of wild animals, but its spread at the secondary level is limited, through human-to-human transmission.

The case fatality rate in monkeypox outbreaks is usually between 1 and 10 percent, with most deaths occurring in the younger population.

There is no treatment or vaccine available to combat the disease, although vaccination against smallpox has proven highly effective in preventing monkeypox as well.

The origin of the disease

Monkeypox is a rare zoonotic viral disease, and the symptoms of monkeypox in humans are similar to those seen in the past in patients with smallpox, but are less severe.

Monkeypox was first detected in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a 9-year-old boy who lived in an area where smallpox was eradicated in 1968.

Since then, most cases have been reported in rural rainforest areas of the Congo Basin and West Africa.

The first cases of the disease outside Africa were recorded in 2003, in the midwestern region of the United States.