Matthew Kavanagh, deputy director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV, is concerned about the stigmatizing rhetoric used in media coverage of the monkeypox outbreak declared in early May. For The worldthis global health specialist explains the risks incurred by the public concerned and the general population.
Why do you find it problematic to recall that most cases of monkeypox have been identified in men who have sex with men?
We are witnessing on social networks, but also in some media, an attempt to assimilate monkeypox to the homosexual community and to present it as a disease “of African descent”. It is remarkable, by the way, that the current endemic in certain African countries has never made the headlines, only because it did not hitherto affect the richest countries of the world.
What we do know so far is that monkeypox can be passed on to anyone. It is not a disease that particularly affects one type of person or one type of sexuality. Granted, many of the cases identified so far have involved men having sex with men, but there have been cases in many different types of people. To say that it is a disease that only affects homosexual men is inaccurate.
History has taught us that this kind of stigma can lead to the wrong approach to public health. It is therefore, in our view, incumbent on the media and governments to counter these messages with serious scientific information on the real risks associated with the disease. If we allow these kinds of stigmatizing messages to spread and take hold, they will have long-term consequences. Based on science, we will have a much better chance of being able to contain this epidemic.
Concretely, how does this kind of message stop the fight against the current epidemic?
The first consequence is that people avoid consulting their caregiver for fear of being identified with a group. Furthermore, resources are not allocated to certain problems if they are considered to concern only certain communities. Finally, this phenomenon prevents public health officials from correctly assessing the magnitude of an epidemic, for example by looking for cases in only one community. It is possible that by concentrating on the care centers accommodating homosexual people, a certain number of cases have been missed.
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