Monkeypox was first reported in 1958 in laboratory monkeys and the first human case was reported in 1970 in a nine-month-old baby in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nigeria reported its first case of monkeypox in humans in 1970 when one case was detected; there were two human cases of monkeypox in Nigeria in 1978. And after nearly four decades of not reporting any cases, monkeypox (West African clade) made a re-emergence in Nigeria in September 2017. From September 2017 to April 30, 2022, Nigeria has reported 558 cases, of which 231 have been laboratory confirmed. There have been dozens of confirmed cases each year in Nigeria since 2017 — 88 in 2017, 49 in 2018, 47 in 2019, eight in 2020, and 34 in 2021. There have been 15 confirmed cases between January 1 and April 30, 2022.
Based on epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 122 confirmed or probable cases of human monkeypox cases in Nigeria between September 22, 2017 and September 16, 2018, researchers found both primary zoonotic and human-to-human transmission. Two cases of healthcare-associated infection were recorded. Based on genome sequencing, the researchers found multiple introductions of the virus, and a single introduction along with human-to-human transmission in a prison facility. The results were published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Since the outbreak began in Nigeria in 2017 and prior to the latest outbreak in Europe and North America, there have been at least eight instances when monkeypox has been exported to countries outside Africa — the U.K., the U.S., Israel and Singapore. Like all diseases that are endemic only to Africa, the story repeats again. While efforts were made to prevent an outbreak in the non-endemic countries outside Africa, no serious international attempts were made to stop the outbreak in Nigeria nor study the virus characteristics.
