A panel of scientists and activists at the AIDS 2022 conference in Montreal called on world governments over the weekend to increase resources to deal with monkeypox epidemics.
The plea came as international experts gathered on Sunday to discuss the need to avoid repeating mistakes made during the early HIV response.
Marina Klein, research director and professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Chronic Viral Diseases at McGill University in Queue, said Montreal can lead by example as it becomes critical to improve the global response to monkeypox.
“There was a very quick response in Montreal to deal with the increasing infections, with the implementation of a very liberal and open, affordable vaccine,” Klein said in an interview Sunday.
Montreal was the initial epicenter of the outbreak in Canada, with about 360 confirmed cases as of July 29. There are now more than 800 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the country.
But the infection rate began to stabilize and plateaued in Montreal, Klein said.
“Part of that came directly from the Department of Public Health, but also with community involvement, which was key to educating about the importance of the vaccine,” she said.
However, Klein said he is concerned that other provinces, Saskatchewan in particular, will not have the same ease of reaching out to vulnerable communities.
“Although there are only two cases as far as identified … we know there are many challenges in Saskatchewan, both with HIV and sexually transmitted infections, particularly among vulnerable populations, including Indigenous communities,” Klein said.
She stressed the importance of community engagement and having a ready vaccine response, but also the need to study the transmission rate of monkeypox.
“We responded quickly, but nowhere in the world did we respond quickly enough to deal with this and get rid of it in the short period of time that we needed,” she said.
“Now we’re going to have to change gears and think about how to control this in the long term.”
Her criticisms were echoed by several other speakers at Sunday’s conference.
Keletso Makofane, a public health researcher at Harvard University, called the global response to monkeypox “worse than the initial response to HIV.”
More than 19,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in the past few months from 78 countries, mostly among men who have sex with men.
“We knew enough to do a lot better to contain this thing,” Makofane said in an interview, adding that the general fatigue of fighting COVID-19 had made the monkeypox response slower than it should have been.
Makofane has also condemned thousands of vaccine doses in Denmark as the number of cases continues to rise.
Unlike the many companies that produce vaccines against COVID-19, Denmark’s Bavarian Nordic is the only producer of the vaccine used against monkeypox.
“It’s outrageous and it’s worse than HIV in the sense that we have the tools to respond,” Macoffan said.
Dr Meg Doherty, Director of the World Health Organization’s Global Programs on HIV, Hepatitis and STIs, told attendees that an equitable approach is critical to ensure that tools are available not only to richer countries, but also in Africa, where monkeypox is traditionally found.
“Thirty-five countries have access or want access to the vaccines … is there a risk that the countries making (requests) for access will come from rich countries? It’s quite a possible risk,” Doherty said on Sunday.
“We want justice. We cannot have a response to monkeypox that only responds to the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.”
The 2022 International AIDS Conference — from July 29 to Tuesday — is expected to attract more than 9,000 delegates from around the world, with another 2,000 registered for remote participation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 31, 2022.
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