ABSTRACT
In May of 2003, I received an urgent phone call from an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC was hard at work with other federal and state agencies to trace a recent outbreak of monkeypox virus in the United States. Monkeypox is a rare, viral disease that occurs primarily in central and western African rainforests that can cause rashes similar to those seen in smallpox, as well as fever, chills, cough, and other symptoms. The illness was first noted in monkeys but also infects other primates, rodents, and other mammals. Investigators identified the primary source of the 2003 outbreak as prairie dogs that had contracted monkeypox from diseased African rodents imported from Ghana, in April of 2003, by a Texan animal distributor [1].
