The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) announced that the global spread of monkeypox does not mean that LGBTQI+ pride parades and celebrations should be avoided this summer.
“It’s important that people who want to go out and celebrate gay pride, LGBTQ+ pride, continue to go and plan to do so,” Andy Seale, a strategist in the World Health Organization’s Department of Global HIV, Hepatitis, and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programs, said at a W.H.O. social media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland.
“Given this is not a gay disease, the transmission routes are common to everybody,” Seale continued. “The advice is pretty much the same for all people.”
Experts at the World Health Organization believe sex at two recent raves in Europe contributed to the virus’s spread, but they have not reached a final judgement.
Since Britain first reported a confirmed monkeypox case on May 7, the World Health Organization has received reports of about 400 suspected and confirmed cases in nearly two dozen nations far from the virus’s endemic areas – whereas a large proportion of cases diagnosed in the UK are among gay and bisexual men.
According to the organisation, several cases have been documented among males who engage in homosexual sex, however the cases may have been a reflection of “positive health seeking behaviour” because they were identified at sexual health clinics.
According to Breitbart News, the United Nations’ Aids organisation (UNAIDS) has already condemned some monkeypox reporting as racist and homophobic, saying that reckless language was hurting the global response to the outbreak.
Some depictions of Africans and LGBTI people seriously “reinforce homophobic and racist prejudices and aggravate stigma,” according to UNAIDS.
The virus was first discovered in monkeys in a Danish laboratory in 1958, hence the term monkeypox. In 1970, the first human case was discovered in a kid in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Close contact with lesions, body fluids, respiratory droplets, and infected surfaces such as bedding can spread the monkeypox virus from one person to another. The incubation period is usually six to thirteen days, although it can be anything from five to twenty-one days.