High-income countries have access to post-exposure prophylaxis with vaccination or immunoglobulin. It is ironic - but utterly predictable - that monkeypox will become a global priority now that people in the Global North are getting the disease. Gaps in current knowledge of monkeypox reflect a long history of deprioritizing African researchers and research into diseases of the Global South. Systemic barriers to academic publishing mean, however, that many voices in countries where monkeypox is endemic were never able to join the discourse.
African researchers have produced countless relevant journal articles that may shape understanding of the current outbreak. North American and European clinicians could learn from their African colleagues, who have the most direct knowledge and experience with diagnosing and treating monkeypox. Quite quickly, the monkeypox outbreak has also reflected the current state of global health inequity, which privileges Western voices and lives.
This mischaracterization stigmatizes Africans as disease sufferers in an outbreak that is primarily occurring among Europeans and North Americans, and in the process creates misinformation about who is at risk in the current outbreak. Initial Western reporting on the monkeypox outbreak extensively used stock images of dark-skinned people with visible rashes on their body, something the Foreign Press Association, Africa has decried. There has also been a racial dimension to the stigma.
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