NPR It all started with an unremarkable trip to grandma’s house in 1970. But two days into the visit, something went terribly wrong.
The 9-month-old grandson fell ill. First, a fever. Then, a nasty rash. Alarmed doctors suspected smallpox but, instead, they soon discovered something even more bewildering: The first-known human case of monkeypox, now called mpox. The child was patient zero.
Today, more than 50 years after that case in a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo, that same virus is sending public health experts scrambling. So far this year, there have been more than 30,000 suspected mpox cases in 15 African countries — dwarfing previous yearly totals. The surge is prompting some to revisit mpox’s history. “Monkeypox was detected in 1970 and now it is blowing out of proportion in 2024, what happened along the way?” asked Ugandan health minister Jane Ruth Aceng at a regional World Health Organization meeting in Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo in August.