Kenya has never had a case of Monkeypox.
It is a case of clearing the ground and the skies that separate Nairobi and its environs of doubts at once and shedding light on the new health bogeyman that the media has been bringing to the fore in recent days.
The Federation of Foreign Press in Africa has risen up in recent days over the use of images linking this (almost never fatal) disease with the continent and people with black skin.
In fact, many more states outside Africa have contracted monkeypox than continental ones, numbering only 11 since 52 years ago when the disease was first found in humans.
It was 1970, and a 9-year-old boy from a rainforest region of Congo was "patient zero" of the contagious primate-borne disease.
Since then, most cases have been reported just in the rural regions of the Congo River Basin, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while sporadic other cases on humans have been reported in Central Africa and some western countries on the Dark Continent.
As we said, since 1970, cases of monkeypox in humans have been reported in 11 African countries-Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan, the only country of these bordering Kenya.
Incidentally, for the past 20 years in Congo and neighboring nations, the strain called "monkeypox" has been much less deadly, though more contagious, than the initial strain. In 1996 an outbreak of monkeypox (a different virus, not an orthopoxvirus like that of smallpox) was reported, so scientists give the explanation for the change in transmission dynamics.
As recently as 2007, it was Nigeria that reported the largest outbreak on the continent, but with only 500 suspected cases of which 200 were confirmed and a mortality ratio of 3 percent. Hardly worrisome numbers. Other data from the World Health Organization remind us how cases have already been reported in Europe in 2018 and 2019, Singapore and the United States in 2021.
Tourists dreaming of a vacation in Kenya in the near future can sleep soundly, the little monkeys, the wonderful colobuses to protect and the baboons of the savannah are waiting for you!