In the past three weeks there have been nearly 100 cases and 18 human deaths from a rare tick-borne disease in Iraq; a fourth case of the Ebola virus and more than 100 cases of bubonic plague have been found in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and just two years after Africa was declared free of wild polio, new cases have turned up in Malawi and Mozambique. A dangerous strain of typhus is circulating in Nepal, India and China. There are alarming outbreaks on several continents of mosquito diseases such as malaria, dengue and West Nile virus.
Set against this global context, the so-far very limited monkeypox outbreaks that have started to appear in the last month – including 71 cases detected in the UK – are only remarkable because they are being reported in rich countries.
