The first cases of mpox were observed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970, then spread to a number of other African countries. In the Central African Republic, the first case was recorded in the 1980s, in a family living in the south-west of the country. The Institut Pasteur de Bangui monitored this case and the subsequent ones, and has since developed expertise on the disease, so it was well positioned to sound the alarm when the first outbreaks occurred in Africa in 2017-2018.