![]() ![]() While monkeypox is more common in central and western Africa, it’s misleading to describe the virus as “being African,” wrote more than 20 scientists in a recent paper detailing the need for a nondiscriminatory, nonstigmatizing name for the disease. Even its name is something of a misnomer: Monkeys (and humans) are just incidental hosts of the disease, which is thought to be found primarily in rodents. Western countries that previously paid little attention to the disease can learn much from African scientists who have studied it for decades.īelieved to have been circulating for thousands of years, monkeypox is mired in misconception. But while there’s cause for concern-at least 2,103 cases have been recorded in 42 countries, and the disease appears to be spreading more rapidly than before-monkeypox is not a novel threat. This May, as news broke of a multicountry monkeypox outbreak, sensationalized headlines and public hysteria (much of it tinged with racism and homophobia) suggested that the disease was poised to kick-start another pandemic. “There’s not much interest in Western health groups about something that’s only circulating in Africa.” “It’s a phenomenon of ‘not in my backyard,’” says Martin Hirsch, editor in chief of the Journal of Infectious Diseases and an immunologist at Harvard University. Until recently, however, it was rarely found in Europe and the Americas-a trend that has, historically, led Western public health officials to disregard its spread elsewhere. An infectious poxvirus that causes fever, chills and rashes, the disease is endemic, or consistently regionally present, in ten African countries. Since it was first identified in a colony of monkeys in Copenhagen in 1958, monkeypox has been largely overlooked by the Western world. ![]()
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