Monkeypox now at highest alert, what now?
2022 Monkeypox Outbreak Global Map. (Screengrab: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the monkeypox outbreak a global public health emergency last Saturday.
Moreover, the WHO declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the highest alert status for a public health event. According to WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the outbreak has resulted in more than 16,000 cases and five deaths reported across 75 countries.
How did we get here?
A lot of things have gone down since the outbreak’s announcement in May.
For one, doctors discovered monkeypox now has different symptoms from what's traditionally found in textbooks. A study published last week confirmed that one in 10 people had only a single skin lesion in the genital area, while 15% had anal and/or rectal pain—vastly different from dated photos of pus-filled blisters that cover the whole body.
These symptoms, similar to those of herpes and syphilis, have caused monkeypox to be misdiagnosed as a sexually transmitted disease (STD). Even worse, it’s caused a new yet eerily familiar stigma against the LGBTQIA+ community, especially towards gay and bisexual men who make up the majority of cases.
Just to clear things up: yes, monkeypox is now a pandemic. No, it’s not the next COVID-19 or HIV. As with both diseases, however, it’s spread airborne and through activities like sex that involve prolonged contact. That’s right about where the similarities end.
Matt Ford, the first American to go public with monkeypox, took to TikTok in June to share his experience. (Screengrab: Matt Ford via TikTok)
How do we make the most of it?
The WHO has announced that they will be renaming monkeypox to prevent another kind of stigma—one against African countries where monkeypox is thought to be spread among people, rather than spread from animals to people. They added that continuing to refer to the monkeypox virus in the context of the current global outbreak as African in origin is “not only inaccurate but is also discriminatory and stigmatizing.”
They also noted that the media commonly use images of Black patients to highlight the outbreak in Europe and the US. The Foreign Press Association of Africa has since urged the media to stop this practice.
How do we get out?
So far, we’ve learned vaccines are the ticket out of a pandemic. We’ve also learned that the journey is always going to be more eventful than the destination.
Only the smallpox vaccine had been used for monkeypox until now. Shortly after its outbreak, people called sus over Bavarian Nordic’s speedy release of the first monkeypox vaccine. They speculated monkeypox was created in a lab, just like COVID.
But skeptics can’t be choosers. With the pox now spreading across the world, Bavarian’s Imnavex has gained traction over the past two months in the US and Canada and is now approved for use in Europe as well.
The Philippines has no reported cases of monkeypox yet. Nearby countries Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand have reported one to two cases each, with the rest of the real-time data available here.
Given its silent spread in the Global North, we can’t get too comfortable unless we want a repeat of early 2020’s events. The Department of Health (DOH) has already released a public health advisory following the WHO’s statement. The agency also said its surveillance systems are now actively monitoring the situation.
Just to be safe, let’s hope we get an actual DOH secretary before anything else bad happens.
