Monkeypox scare in US Midwest

Health officials in the United States have reported what appears to be the first documented outbreak of monkeypox in the western hemisphere.

Monkeypox, a rare smallpox-like disease primarily found in Central and West Africa, is not usually fatal to human beings but does cause fever and rashes.

Nineteen people have fallen sick in the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana since mid-May, all of whom came into contact with sick prairie dogs - sometimes kept as pets in America.

A spokesman for the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stressed that no-one had died from the suspected illness, which is still being investigated.

The sufferers, 17 of whom fell ill in Wisconsin, all came into contact with prairie dogs sold to two pet shops and at a "pet swap" by an animal dealer from the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee, the CDC reports on its website.

That dealer had in turn obtained his prairie dogs along with a sick Gambian giant rat from a dealer in Illinois, and the CDC is now trying to determine the source of the animals and what, if any, other distribution may have occurred.

The CDC has issued instructions to doctors and vets on how to detect symptoms of monkeypox among patients and what measures to take when handling it.

Vaccine loss

Prairie dogs are wild rodents which live in burrows on the western US plains. African animals susceptible to the disease include Gambian rats, other rodents, and rabbits.

Monkeypox is caused by a virus known as an orthopoxvirus and is from the same family of viruses as the more deadly smallpox.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports on its website that the most recent big outbreak in Africa occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997.

Protection against monkeypox was much greater when people were vaccinated against smallpox.

But with the eradication of smallpox in 1980, vaccination also ended, the WHO notes.