With one of Europe’s largest gay pride celebrations looming, Spain’s LGBTQ community is concerned that an outbreak of monkeypox on the continent may lead to an increase in homophobic sentiment based on misconceptions about the disease.
Spanish health officials said on Thursday that the country now has 84 confirmed cases, the most in Europe. They are focusing their investigation on links between a gay pride program in the Canary Islands, which attracted some 80,000 people in early May, and cases involving the Madrid sauna.
But some, especially gay and bisexual men, believe there is a touch of homophobic hysteria in the wider public’s response to a rare outbreak of the disease outside Africa, where it has long been endemic.
According to officials in Britain, Spain, Germany and Portugal, most of the known cases in Europe are among men who have sex with men. A top World Health Organization adviser said the outbreak was triggered by sexual activity at two recent mass events in Europe.
The outbreak in Spain comes on the heels of Madrid’s Gay Pride celebration, which will take place in early July. The events are expected to attract larger crowds, unlike the last two years, which were reduced or canceled due to the COVID-19 restrictions. Organizers say the city’s last pre-pandemic pride festival, in 2019, attracted around 1.6 million people, though police put the figure at around 400,000.
“Pride is a huge party, it’s a moment to make our voices heard, which brings so many people together,” Mario Blazquez, coordinator of health programs for LGBTQ group COGAM in Madrid, told the Associated Press.
Blazquez said he is concerned that next month’s Pride celebrations could be jeopardized partly by excessive restrictions driven by prejudice and partly by fears of another public health emergency on top of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We don’t know what will happen. We don’t know what the level of transmission of the virus will be or what legal measures can be taken. And then what stigma can be created by these legal measures which are sometimes discriminatory.”
So far, Spanish officials have not mentioned any comprehensive public health measures that would disrupt large gatherings.
But beyond the Pride March, Blazquez said he worries that society may be making the same mistake it made at the start of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when a focus on the disease among gay men left the wider population unaffected. Meanwhile, its spread had become unclear.
“It’s a disease that can happen to any member of the population,” Blazquez said. “We are facing an outbreak that has unfortunately once again affected LGBTQ people, and gay and bisexual men in particular. What is happening is somewhat similar to the first cases of HIV.”
Read also: Madras High Court suggests changes in school, university curriculum for LGBTQ education of students
Health officials in Europe, North America, Israel and Australia have identified more than 150 cases of the disease in recent weeks. This is a surprising outbreak of a disease that rarely appears outside of Africa, where it has remained a serious health threat since the first cases in humans were discovered in the 1970s.
Experts say that anyone can become infected by close contact with a sick person, their clothing or bedsheets. Most people recover within two to four weeks without hospitalization. However, WHO says that 3-6% of cases were fatal in recent days.
Health officials around the world are tracking more cases as the disease is spreading for the first time among people who have not traveled to Africa. However, they emphasize that the risk to the general population is low.
As of Thursday, Italy had 10 confirmed cases of monkeypox, some, but not all, of people who had traveled to Spain’s Canary Islands.
“With regard to the question of sexual transmission, I believe that we cannot yet define it strictly as a sexually transmitted disease,” said Dr. Andrea Antinori, director of viral immunodeficiency at Spallanzani Hospital in Rome.
“Therefore I will refrain from identifying this disease as a sexually transmitted disease at this time, and above all, identifying the population – men who have sex with men – as carriers of this disease because I believe It is also a problem of responsibility, from the point of view of not tarnishing the situation.
“This disease is still to be understood as we face a new wave that is different from what we have historically known in the past decades.”
Spain’s health minister, Carolina Darías, said on Wednesday that her government has decided to opt for mass procurement of the EU’s monkeypox vaccine, which, like the COVID-19 vaccine, is distributed based on the population of each participating country. Will. He said government health experts are looking at how best to use the vaccine once it becomes more widely available.
Amos García, president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology, recommended that the vaccine be given only to people who have had direct contact with an infected person and are vulnerable to infection, not the general population.
“We’re talking about a disease that doesn’t have a great potential to become an epidemic,” Garcia said, adding that most Spaniards over the age of 40 should be protected with the smallpox vaccines that were routinely administered decades ago. was done.