DAKAR, Senegal — In a part of Nigeria that has dealt with monkeypox outbreaks for years, one doctor saw the photos circulating in Western media this week and chuckled.
Health
As monkeypox panic spreads, doctors in Africa see a double standard – The Washington Post
“Those are the very severe cases,” said Oyewale Tomori, a virologist in the nation’s southwest. “Like, ‘Ahh! This is monkeypox!’ ”
The virus — discovered five decades ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo — causes mild illness in most people, along with blisters that usually clear up in weeks, he said. It’s much less transmissible than the coronavirus and much less deadly than Ebola. There’s already an effective vaccine.
What bothers infectious-disease experts across the continent is the double standard that has emerged since monkeypox grabbed the world’s attention: Few seemed to care, or even notice, until people in the West started getting sick.
In the past two weeks, cases of the animal-borne virus typically found in West and Central Africa have popped up in the United States, Canada, Australia, Israel and a growing number of European countries. There have been at least 92 confirmed infections and no deaths. Belgium has imposed a 21-day quarantine. President Biden assured Americans that the United States has enough vaccine stocks to address the threat.
Yet global alarm bells didn’t sound as several African nations battled outbreaks in recent months. The graphic images blazing across social media — some of the same ones used to illustrate monkeypox since the 1970s — rarely feature White patients.
“These cases are recorded in Europe,” Tomori said. “Why are you using a picture of an African? Those are your pox.”
The World Health Organization has not yet verified the origin of the outbreak, though one WHO adviser told the Associated Press that the cases could be linked to raves in Spain and Belgium. Monkeypox usually spreads by close contact, including sexual activity.
Health officials suspect the virus has been traveling undetected in nonendemic nations for some time — potentially as far back as 2018. Early tests suggest cases stem from the West African strain, which the WHO said has a fatality rate of about 1 percent.
Before monkeypox struck the West this year, the WHO said Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic all recorded small case numbers. But contact tracing is limited, said Yap Boum, a Cameroonian epidemiologist. Infections tend to arise in remote, forested areas, where people encounter wildlife that carry monkeypox, such as primates and rodents.
“Maybe now that it’s happening over there, the problem will get more attention,” Boum said, “and we will gain access to more vaccines, more treatments — all the things we did not have the money for.”
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been battling the world’s largest outbreak by far: at least 1,238 cases and 57 deaths since January. The strain found there is also much more deadly, with a fatality rate as high as 10 percent. Many deaths are preventable, doctors said, but treatment can be hard to find in areas with underfunded hospitals.
“It can be devastating in the same way as covid-19,” said Health Minister Jean Jacques Mbungani. But the country’s monkeypox preparations lost steam during the pandemic. The nation needs more tests, more inoculations, more medical workers tracing cases and caring for the ill.
“The response is not effective,” Mbungani said, “and remains lethargic due to the scarcity of resources.”
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said Monday that the bulk of documented cases have been mild. Young children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems face a heightened risk.
One of Nigeria’s top genomic sequencing experts, Christian Happi, is inviting his counterparts to come study how his country has managed monkeypox.
“It’s not that scary here,” he said. “People are used to it. Come learn from our public health authorities. Come see how we contain it.”
The global enthusiasm to combat the virus should have arrived sooner, he said. Maybe it could have been eradicated by now.
“Paying attention to disease wherever it happens benefits everyone,” he said. “As the pandemic has shown us, we are all in this together.”
Ombour reported from Nairobi.
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Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
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Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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