DNA Special: Should you be scared about monkeypox? Who is most at risk?

The world suffering from the long transition period of coronavirus is at serious risk of a new infection and the name of this danger is monkeypox. Like many countries of the world, cases of monkeypox are gradually increasing in India. On Sunday, a new case of monkeypox was found in the country's capital Delhi. With this, so far four cases have been reported in the country. 

While this is a small figure, it is also very worrying because the World Health Organization has declared monkeypox as a global public health emergency two days ago. This means that the disease of monkeypox should not be taken lightly and proper prevention and precautions are also very important to prevent it.

The WHO has declared a global health emergency only 6 times before in the world including Coronavirus in 2020, Ebola in 2019 and Zika virus in 2016.

Monkeypox spread

Monkeypox virus has spread to more than 75 countries so far and more than 16 thousand people have been infected by it worldwide. The worst condition is in Spain where more than 3100 cases have been found, followed by countries like America, Germany, France, Brazil and Canada where the cases of monkeypox are more than 500. Monkeypox took only 80 days to reach from zero to 16,000 cases this year.

In the year 2022, the first case of monkeypox was found on May 6. Last month, there were only 3,030 cases of monkeypox in 47 countries. But after that its patients increased 5 times in just 30 days. That is, the whole way of infection is like coronavirus.

Who is most at risk?

According to doctors, those who were born after the year 1980 are more at risk of monkeypox, that is, people under 42 years of age are at a higher risk of monkeypox. Most of the people born before 1980 have chicken pox or smallpox vaccine. According to research, even today, smallpox vaccine is most effective against monkeypox.

Origin of the virus

The first case of monkeypox was reported in the Danish capital Copenhagen in 1958, when a virus different from smallpox was found in two monkeys from a research center. From there the virus was named Monkeypox. 

The first case of monkeypox in humans was found in the African country Democratic Republic of Congo in the year 1970. For a long time the virus of monkeypox was confined to African countries but after that in the year 2003, there were more than 70 cases of monkeypox in America. 

Although monkeypox was controlled through testing and tracking at that time, after nearly two decades in the months of July and November of 2021, once again in America, the monkeypox virus infected people.

Since that time and after that, once again from May, the infection of monkeypox has increased rapidly, but this time this infection has reached the global level, it is increasing rapidly in many countries. The advice is to not be careless about monkeypox at all. It's a matter of your safety, for all of us.

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