now i'm joined by professor hugh pennington. good evening, professor hugh. thank you. professor.orjoining me. right i'm being a little sceptical about how much we should be panicking about this mpox spread, how serious is it? normally in africa, as we've heard, there's been 15,000 cases in the democratic republic of congo. how does that compare to a typical year? do you know ? a typical year? do you know? >> we don't really know because we don't bother to measure it, particularly in countries like the democratic republic of the congo, which is one of the poorest countries in the world. and we know that that mpox has been, around there for many, many years. and it actually occurs in wild animals. and you can catch it by eating sort of bushmeat, although that's not been mentioned in this particular in the context of this particular outbreak . it this particular outbreak. it also occurs in west africa and that's important because there are two different kinds of mpox. there's the one that's causing the difficulties in the in the drc for, you know, let's call them rather than democra