The World Health Organization has revealed that there are now 131 confirmed cases of monkeypox, and a further 106 suspected cases, in 19 countries. Experts describe the event as "random" but "containable".

What is monkeypox?

• It's an orthopoxvirus, like other well-known diseases like chickenpox and smallpox.
• Monkeypox is less problematic than smallpox was in terms of the mortality rate. 
• Although it is called monkeypox, it doesn't really come from monkeys. We only began to pay attention to it when monkeys began to get it.

 How the disease is transmitted?

• Monkeypox, are viewed as generalists, means this virus can infect a variety of species. Rodents are the most common vehicles for infection, then it jumped to monkeys and now humans.
• It's spread through contact with contaminated fluids from an infected person and it needs to be relatively close contact.
• There have been some reports suggesting that it happens mostly through intimate contact, including really close proximity or having sex with a person.
• It could be any kind of intimate contact, heterosexual or whatever.

What are the symptoms of monkeypox?

• It starts with a headache and fever, the usual things that you deal with when you get a viral infection.
• Within a week or two, some people get a rash which develops into pustules.
• If you're covered in these pustules, then you'd have the risk of bacterial infection and, in some cases, sepsis. That's where the lethality can come from.

In countries with good healthcare and drugs, the fatality rate will remain below 1 percent. Rural countries will have higher mortality rate.