The World Health Organization raises its maximum level of alert. Monkeypox has so far accounted for nearly 20,000 cases worldwide, mainly among men having homosexual relations.
Nimâ Machouf, epidemiologist, specializing in international health and infectious diseases, recalls that monkeypox remained endemic in Africa, “1000 people became infected each year and the mortality rate was 5 to 10%. […] Now with over 20,000 cases and only three deaths, it’s less serious. But you have to be careful.”
Sarah Reboullet, General Secretary of Act Up-Paris, a militant association fighting once morest AIDS, stresses that it strikes isolated people and “precarious, like sex workers who have to isolate themselves for a long month, resulting in the total cessation of their income.”