An aggressive public health response and immediate buy-in from men who have sex with men the group most affected by the outbreak has helped to contain mpox in Canada, public health doctors say.

High vaccination rates and a change in behaviour mostly among gay and bisexual men has all but eliminated the viral disease formerly known as “monkeypox” since cases peaked during the summer.

“It is a remarkable story of success in an epidemic that was completely unpredicted and had significant global spread,” said Zain Chagla, an infectious disease physician and professor at McMaster University.

“The community was really leveraged to protect its own and did a remarkable job of reaching the networks that it needed to reachthat typical public health officials could not.”

Mpox is a viral disease closely related to smallpox that is spread through close physical contact and can jump from animals to humans.

Most commonin central and western Africa, mpoxis found only occasionally elsewhere in the world. But in early May, several outbreaks appeared concurrently in non-endemic countries, such as Canada and the United States, for the first time.