EditorLess than one hour after Prime Business Africa published an opinion article, ‘Monkeypox: Another Red-Alert For Nigerians,” written by retired Permanent Secretary Linus Awute, United Kingdom-based health expert and Analyst at Prime Business Africa, Dr Gabriel Uguru reacted to the matter, saying the disease is not only benign but also does not come anywhere near the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
READ ALSO: Monkeypox: Another Red-Alert For Nigeria
Dr Uguru in a message to PBA on Wednesday said:
Kindly forward this to Linus Awute, the author of your recent article. What do you mean by monkeypox kills adamantly? The virus has only 1% and 10% mortality for the West African and Congo Basin strains, respectively. Therefore, it cannot be said to have high mortality rate anywhere near COVID-19. The disease is benign and patients in most cases recover in about 2 weeks without requiring treatments.
Your analysis was interesting in that you approached the issue politically, but the monkeypox issue here in the West is being viewed scientifically! Everybody is concerned not because of the transmissibility of the virus, it is by the way sluggish, but for the simple fact that the virus is occurring in areas outside of its traditional endemicity. Add to that the fact that the virus seems to be exclusively infecting homosexuals.
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Scientists are trying to understand the mode of transmission from Africa to the West and why homosexuals are bearing the brunt. Most of the cases have been traced, some originating from a traveller from Nigeria, some from a traveller from Canada. The sequence of the monkey virus, which sparked an outbreak in 2018 and 2019 when travellers from Nigeria spread the virus to people in Singapore, USA and Israel, closely matched the sequences of some of the strains involved in this latest outbreak.
In conclusion, your article was interesting, but your assumption that the West is trying to blame Africa as they blamed China for Coronavirus lately, is wide of the mark. Thank you – Gabriel Uguru
Awute in response to Dr Uguru, said:
Hello readers, I humbly acknowledge your open hearted responses to my article. I am very particular about this response by the gentleman whose name is undisclosed to me.
I hope Mr. Achilleus and Marcel will convey my appreciation of his contribution as I will continue to cherish his sincerity of purpose which I believe is the undercurrent of his response or reaction. I have accordingly learned from him as well.
Suffice it to say, that my article is not written for any scientific publication neither is it aimed at specialized journal for academic reward. It is rather an article of a senior citizen calling on his people to be always alert and not to be caught off guard.
Another identifiable substance of my article is the fact that it carries with it a sustainable argument that counters the looming sentiments and faulty narratives in some quarters of the world, arising from their discomfort with the fact that the outbreak occurred in Europe, America, Canada and Australia instead of…… In fact my article has been commended by many prominent scholars and historians that are far higher than me for its merit in that context.
As for the word “adamant” I believe it is a free word rather than scientific as it’s deliberately used in my article metaphorically to still alert on the fact that no death is a good death’ whether it’s from Covid-19, EVD or monkeypox virus and that monkeypox is also a bad disease and that it kills indeed. This is not a mere assumption: I am reasonably aware, according to CDC, that one(1) in every ten(10) severe cases of monkeypox disease will result in death. – Linus Awute, mni
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