“There are, you know, echoes,” said Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke Global Health Institute.Īnd they pose a similar tight-rope challenge for officials: How do you get tools and information about the disease to those who need it without wrongly implying that only that group is at risk, or publicly associating an unfamiliar disease with an already stigmatized community?įortunately, this time around, officials have a playbook to work from - one written and rewritten during the worst missteps of the AIDS crisis, as well as the collaborations that ultimately helped curtail the HIV epidemic and other outbreaks.
Although the monkeypox strain now in circulation is infinitely milder than HIV - zero fatalities have been reported out of the more than 1,000 cases so far - it is another virus that emerged in sub-Saharan Africa and has popped up outside the continent largely in men who have sex with men. The parallels between the two infections are limited but clear. As officials, researchers and activists scramble to control an emerging monkeypox outbreak, many are doing so with another virus constantly wedged in the back of their minds: HIV.
