It was September 2017 at a teaching hospital in Nigeria’s southern state of Bayelsa. An 11-year-old boy came into the clinic with a fever, rash and lesions on his body.
Infectious disease scientist and Chief Medical Director Dimie Ogoina examined him. At first, doctors thought it could be chickenpox, but after hearing the boy had previously had the illness, they suspected it must be something more serious.
Upon further examination, Ogoina concluded that it was likely monkeypox, a highly infectious disease that causes a skin rash, mucosal lesions and other symptoms the boy was experiencing.
It was a stunning finding. The last case of monkeypox – now called mpox – detected in Nigeria was nearly 40 years earlier. And even then, there were only two cases ever recorded. The country was not prepared for it.
At that point, Ogoina couldn’t be certain of the diagnosis, though. He first had to notify the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which needed to take a sample and then send it to the Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, for testing. The process took days, but when the results came in, it was as Ogoina had suspected.
As alarm bells rang through Nigeria, more suspected cases started to stream into his hospital. Every one had to be tested and confirmed from Dakar.
Fear, stigma and speculation grew and were palpable inside the hospital. They were aided by fake theories spreading in the media about “another Ebola” – the haemorrhagic viral disease that hit the country just three years before.
The 11-year-old, on returning home healthy again, was taunted by neighbours as “monkey boy”. Other misconceptions also emerged: One man who’d been traced from an infected female sexual partner refused to report to a hospital, insisting his sickness was a “spiritual attack” and would be cured as such.
Some patients could not bear the fear and waiting.
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