The Republic of the Congo has declared a monkeypox epidemic after confirmed 19 cases in five departmentsincluding the capital, Brazzaville.
No deaths have been recorded yet, Health Minister Gilbert Mokoki said in a statement on Tuesday.
He asked the public to take precautions, including avoiding close contact with suspected cases, avoid contact with animals and avoid handling game meat with bare hands.
The World Health Organization (WHO) now prefers to call the virus “mpox” to replace the old term monkeypoxciting concerns of stigma and racism associated with the name.
In 2022, The WHO declared an outbreak that spread to Europe and North America a global health emergency.
The first human case of monkeypox was reported in August 1970 in Bokenda, a remote village in the equatorial province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The infected person was a 9-month-old boy who was admitted to Basankusu Hospital with suspicion of having contracted smallpox. A sample, sent to the WHO Smallpox Reference Center in Moscow, revealed that the symptoms were caused by the monkeypox virus.
The patient’s family said that Sometimes they ate monkeys as a delicacy, although they could not remember if they had eaten monkeys in the last month or if the child had been in contact with a monkey before developing symptoms. The investigation showed that the child was the only one in the family who had not been vaccinated against human smallpox.
As explained by Raúl Rivas González, a Microbiology academic at the University of Salamanca in a report by The Conversation, Monkeypox is caused by an orthopoxvirus similar to the Variola virus. (the causative agent of smallpox), cowpox virus and Vaccinia virus. Since the eradication of human smallpox, monkeypox has assumed the role of the most prominent orthopoxvirus affecting human communities.
According to Rivas González, in human beings, The symptoms of monkeypox are similar to the symptoms of smallpox, although somewhat milder. They begin with fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, chills, and exhaustion. The main difference between the symptoms of both smallpox is that The second causes the lymph nodes to swell (lymphadenopathy), while the first does not.
The incubation period for monkeypox is usually 7 to 14 days, but it can be reduced to 5 and raised to 21 days. It is normal to develop a rash, which often starts on the face and then spreads to other parts of the body, particularly the hands and feet. After a short time, the rash changes and goes through different stages before forming a scab and eventually falling off.
The illness usually lasts 2 to 4 weeks. Transmission is believed to occur through saliva or respiratory excretions, or by contact with the lesion or scab material. Viral excretion through feces may also represent another source of exposure.
The African continent is facing a resurgence of monkeypox in the last decade. More confirmed cases of this smallpox have been diagnosed since 2016 than in the previous 40 years.
