Afghanistan Announces 2 Earliest Monkeypox Cases

Scientists discovered the sickness in 1958 after two outbreaks of a “pox-like” disease in laboratory monkeys — hence the term monkeypox. In 1970, a little boy in a rural section of Congo became the first known human infection.

Thousands of infections are estimated to occur each year in approximately a dozen of African nations, according to the World Health Organization. The majority of cases are reported in Congo, which has around 6,000 cases per year, and Nigeria, which has about 3,000 cases per year.