Nine people are killed by monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the first fatality expected in Nigeria in 2022.

 According to Dr. Aime Alongo, chairman of the Sankuru health division in Congo, the country has 465 confirmed instances of the sickness, making it one of the worst-affected in West and Central Africa, where the condition is widespread. 

According to Dr. Alongo, the disease's persistence in Congo is linked to the ingestion of deceased monkeys and rats. 

"The inhabitants go into the jungle and pick up the bodies of monkeys, bats, and rodents, which are the monkeypox reservoirs," the official continued, advising anyone who have monkeypox symptoms to seek treatment at a health centre.

Meanwhile, Nigeria's diseases control agency reported Sunday that a patient with underlying medical issues died of monkeypox for the first time this year. 

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said that 21 of 66 suspected cases of the disease, which is common in Nigeria and other parts of West and Central Africa, were confirmed in 2022. 

The Nigeria CDC stated, "The fatality was recorded in a 40-year-old patient who had underlying co-morbidity and was on immunosuppressive drugs." 

Although there hasn't been a monkeypox outbreak in Nigeria since September 2017, isolated cases are still being reported. Since then, at least 247 cases have been recorded in 22 of the 36 states, with a 3.6 percent fatality rate, according to the disease control organisation.

A surge of monkeypox cases reported in Europe and the United States has alarmed those countries, many of which had not seen a single case in years. According to the World Health Organization, over 250 cases of the disease have been documented in more than 20 nations that aren't often associated with outbreaks. 

Monkeypox has never caused large-scale epidemics outside of Africa, where it is prevalent. 

One of the new instances in the UK occurred days after a guy arrived from Nigeria on May 4. Six confirmed instances of the disease have been reported in Nigeria after the British individual departed the country.

Nothing indicates that the British individual caught the disease in Nigeria, according to Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa, the country's director of disease control, who told The Associated Press that the government is prepared to respond to a monkeypox outbreak. 

"The biggest challenge with a disease like monkeypox is that it is uncommon, and the population's perception of how dangerous this condition is has been very low," Adetifa explained. "That is why... we have conducted awareness training and advocacy training to increase the level of awareness of health care workers."