the World Health Organisation announced that it was changing the name of Monkeypox disease to Mpox, it seemed like a curious step in the nomenclature for a disease. The current and ongoing outbreak of the disease condition was first confirmed in the United Kingdom in May 2022. It was to become the nucleus of a cluster of cases to emerge in the British capital. That index case was detected in a patient who had recently travelled to Nigeria where the disease is quite common.
The WHO announced very unusually in November 2022 that it would change the name of this disease from Monkeypox to Mpox because of a letter communicated to the organisation by a team of about 24 African scientists who criticised the name being linked to the monkey as the virus had no relationship with that primate. In their thinking, the name fitted the stereotype of the general view of those of us from this continent as nothing much different from apes.
From the United States through Latin America to Africa and Asia, it was evident that the poorest of the populations were also likely to suffer the most from a disease condition that had killed many. Blacks and Latinos in North America suffered disproportionately and died in huge numbers. In the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain, all of which were hit hard, ethnic minorities and the low-income earners bore the brunt of the disease.
The severity of the illness depends on the person’s immunity level. Young children, pregnant women and people suffering from other conditions that reduce their immune status have a severe form of the infection. Only a small percentage of people who ever caught Mpox have died from it. Most of the time, the blisters, which are properly called vesicles, appear between five and 21 days after the infection has occurred.
The lesions produced by this infection may be small in size or in number as we said earlier. Sometimes, many of these could join together to form larger lesions. For good measure, this infection is believed to be under-reported in Nigeria and other African countries because it gained prominence at about the same time that many countries were focused on controlling Covid-19. It is believed therefore that many patients avoided going to the hospital for fear of contracting Covid.
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