Monkeypox: A Whole Story
HIBAPRESS-RABAT-WHO
The spread of the monkeypox virus is worrying health authorities and the WHO has just triggered its highest level of alert.
His name is sometimes associated with another virus, the deadly human smallpox virus.
With more than 17,000 confirmed cases in 74 countries, monkeypox is on the rise. As such, the WHO has just triggered its highest level of alert. A development that has brought back memories of smallpox, an ancient disease eradicated at the end of the last century.
With similar symptoms, a similar structure and shape of the virus, these two diseases have reason to be confused. However, one turns out to be much less dangerous and less contagious. Beyond the name, can we really compare these two viruses?
The viruses that cause smallpox and monkeypox both belong to the Orthopoxvirus family and share much of their genetic sequence. They are therefore cousins, but distantly related.
As the Montpellier hospital center recalls, human smallpox appeared more than 10,000 BC, between China and Africa. Monkeypox was detected several tens of thousands of years later, in a primate, in 1958, in Denmark. It was then identified in humans in 1970, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Many scientists believe that monkeypox does not derive from human smallpox, but is merely “an attenuated form” that appears regularly in Central and West Africa, and makes occasional incursions into Europe.
