Monkeypox now a 'Global Pandemic.— W.H.O

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declares monkeypox as a global emergency 

 Now that monkeypox has officially been declared a "global emergency" by the World Health Organization, perhaps government officials will muster more resources and public attention to ward off this public health threat. 

More than 16,000 cases have been reported across more than 70 countries, including about 2,900 in the United States as of Friday, as the outbreak accelerates predominantly though not exclusively among gay and bisexual men. 

Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said it's only a matter of time before the outbreak spreads in the population more broadly. He called on the U.S. government to take more aggressive action to educate the public and combat the spread of the virus.

Adams, a distinguished professor and executive director of health equity initiatives at Purdue University and a member of the USA TODAY Opinion Board of Contributors, spoke Thursday with Editorial Board members Austin Bogues and Steven Porter. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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What does the public need to keep in mind about monkeypox right now?

What we need to understand about monkeypox is that this is a rapidly evolving situation. We are seeing an exponential spread of cases, but we're seeing those cases right now focused on the MSM community, or men who have sex with men.

There are many different reasons for this, including the fact that there are social networks where this is spreading, including the types of activities that are occurring. Personal contact, direct contact is traditionally how monkeypox is spread. So we need to focus on education, testing and resources for those communities so that we can control the spread right now.

But we also need to be aware that it's not "if," it's "when" we start to see spread beyond the MSM community in the United States. 

As colleges go back this fall, is monkeypox transmission a concern?

Right now, again, we know that monkeypox is spread by close personal contact. And this current outbreak has really been spread by sexual contact, particularly among men who have sex with men. We know that college students tend to have more sex than the general population.

There are men who have sex with men – many of those then also have sex with women – in college environments. So we need to make sure college students are aware of the symptoms of monkeypox.

I always encourage people to practice safe sex, to wear condoms. We don't know yet whether that will significantly lower the risk of contracting monkeypox. It won't completely eliminate it. But either way, it's a good idea to use a condom if you're having sex, particularly with someone you don't know, and we need to be prepared to quickly respond to any outbreaks on campus so we can contain them.

Do we have the capacity to vaccinate, test  and treat monkeypox on college campuses?

W.H.O talked about this, watch below 👇🏻 

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declares monkeypox as a global emergency 

Right now we do not have the capacity to properly treat and vaccinate people for monkeypox. And, it's an important distinction here for monkeypox: You can vaccinate people who are at risk before they're exposed, but you can also use vaccines as post-exposure prophylaxis – which is why it's important that people who are at risk know that if you've been exposed and if you are early in the symptomatology, you can actually get vaccinated at that point, and that can prevent progression of the disease. But we don't have enough vaccines available in this country.

Right now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has talked about how they're expanding testing to more places, but we're running into many of the same problems with testing that we ran into with COVID-19 testing in the beginning where most of it was centralized at the CDC. It was very difficult to obtain, and it took a long time for people to get their test results back. By the time you get a test result back, you've already spread it to other people.

So the honest answer is no, we don't have the capacity we need, but we're seeing it gradually start to build up, and experts such as myself are calling on the CDC and the federal government to do more, to increase testing, to increase vaccines and to increase communication about monkeypox.

Source: USA Today 

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