A group of scientists and activists at the AIDS 2022 conference in Montreal urged governments around the world over the weekend to increase resources to handle monkeypox outbreaks.
The plea came as international experts met on Sunday to discuss the need to avoid repeating mistakes made during the early HIV response.
Marina Klein, director of research and professor of medicine at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Chronic Viral Diseases at McGill University in Que., said Montreal could set an example as it becomes crucial to improving the response global monkey pox.
“There was a very quick response in Montreal to deal with the increase in infections, with the implementation of a very liberal, open and accessible 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 rate of infections has begun to stabilize and has reached a plateau in Montreal, Klein said.
“Part of that has come directly from the Department of Public Health but also with community involvement, which has been key to educating about the importance of the vaccine,” he said.
Klein, however, said he’s concerned that other provinces, particularly Saskatchewan, don’t have the same ease of connecting with vulnerable communities.
“Although there are only two cases identified … we know that in Saskatchewan there have been many challenges, both with HIV and sexually transmitted infections, particularly among vulnerable populations, including Indigenous communities,” Klein said.
He stressed the importance of community involvement and having a vaccine response ready, but also the need to study the extent of monkeypox transmission.
“We responded quickly, but nowhere in the world responded quickly enough to address it and get rid of it in the short amount of time we needed,” he said.
“Now we’ll have to change teams and think about how we’re going to control it in the long term.”
His criticisms were echoed by several other speakers at Sunday’s conference.
Keletso Makofane, a public health researcher at Harvard University, called the overall response to monkeypox “worse than the initial response to HIV.”
More than 19,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 78 countries in recent months, mostly among men who have sex with men.
“We knew enough to have done a lot better to contain this thing,” Makofane said in an interview, adding that the general fatigue of fighting COVID-19 made the monkeypox response slower than it would have been to have been
Makofane also reported thousands of vaccine doses sitting in Denmark as the number of cases continues to rise.
Unlike the many companies that made vaccines against COVID-19, Denmark’s Bavarian Nordic is the only manufacturer 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,” Makofane 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 crucial to ensure tools are available not only in wealthier countries, but also in Africa, where monkeypox is traditionally found.
“Thirty-five countries have been accessing or requesting access to vaccines… is there a risk that the countries that are making (requests for) access are from rich countries? That is a very possible risk,” he said Doherty on Sunday.
“We want fairness. We can’t have a smallpox response that only responds to the UK, Canada and the US.”
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 to participate remotely.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 31, 2022.