Smallpox was high on my radar again after the 2017 Evans horsepox experiment, which proved that smallpox could be synthesised in a lab. It was the same year that monkeypox began causing large epidemics in Nigeria.

These were the warning bells that should have prompted our government to prepare and stockpile newer drugs and vaccines. When monkeypox hit our shores, we had no antivirals or third-generation vaccines.

Concerned about orthopoxviruses and wanting to raise awareness of the threat, I conceived and designed a tabletop exercise, initially called ‘Exercise Mataika’, to improve preparedness for the re-emergence of smallpox but also pandemics in general.

In the simulation, an unknown epidemic begins in Fiji and later spreads around the world through travel.