In 2020 when the world's greatest concern was Covid, that's when we also learned that "Monkey Pox" was on the rise after it was declared a public global health emergency two years after.
But lately if you've been following international news, then you would know that the reports of cases have become more frequent.
It's been detected in 116 different countries and regions including Mexico and Quintana Roo and so today we also asked the director of Epidemiology in the ministry of health, what this could mean for Belize:
Dr. Russell Manzanero, Director, Epidemiology, MOHW
"For MPOX well, definitely it is a concern. I mean, August 14th, WHO did declare it a public health emergency of international concern, mainly because of the increase of cases within Africa. If you do understand, MPOX has different clades, sort of different variants."
"We have a clade one and two. When we had the first outbreak in 2022, which basically affected globally, we did see that that scenario was based on clade two. Now that we're seeing this increase of cases within Africa, that's a different clade, that's clade one B."
"It has been sparking some interest here because of the outbreak of cases, especially among adults and children. And the concern there is that it is no longer a sexual mode of transmission, but now it has been moved now towards a more direct contact between individuals."
"Of course, the concern of why it became a public health emergency was because of the different limitations that you might see in Africa. Of course, you look at the impact it may have on the general population."
"You look at what the health system in existence is there. So definitely with movement, with people, then definitely you can have that potential to spread to other parts of the world."
