AIDS has echoes of monkey disease.

In the year In the 1980s and 90s, efforts to prevent monkeypox among survivors of the AIDS epidemic unnecessarily exposed the LGBTQ+ community who carried the virus.

Men who have sex with men have been affected by shingles to this day, but LGBTQ+ health advocates say the wrong messaging by labeling shingles as a “gay disease” is eroding effective prevention measures and allowing the virus to spread. Health experts have warned that the stigma is now being exposed after reports that Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics, two of the largest medical diagnostic companies in the US, refused phlebotomists to draw blood from patients with suspected monkeypox.

“In the 80s, when HIV first hit, the government was slow to respond. It spread among people, and for this to happen again – this is 41 years later and what have we learned?” Vince Cristomo, director of aging services at the AIDS Foundation of San Francisco, is a long-time survivor of HIV/AIDS. “We’re going through the second covid pandemic of our lives and to come in here and get the same weird message? There is a great connection.

“This triggered my post-traumatic stress disorder because beyond my own experience, meeting people we serve in our own communities and hearing a lot of the same things.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Reports As of August 8, there have been more than 30,000 cases of monkeypox worldwide, including nearly 9,000 in the US. Monkey disease is primarily transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, which includes sex. But treating gonorrhea as a sexually transmitted infection contributes to a stigma that hinders efforts to contain the virus.

Torian L. Baskerville with the Human Rights Campaign says, “There’s a perfect way to be honest about what monkey disease is, and there’s a perfect way to be honest about what communities are currently hurting without harming those communities.”

Sending a message with stigma

Advocates say that effective messaging around the disease will help MSM bear the brunt of the epidemic and allow other populations to adequately assess their risks.

WHO Director-General Theodore Adhanom Ghebreyesus has dismayed LGBTQ+ public health advocates on July 27 by advising men who have sex with men to reduce their number of sexual partners and start having sex with new partners. Brief description.

“If there’s no stigma in the area, how do we get the information? That’s very difficult because it’s already stigmatized,” said Paul Aguilar, chair of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club’s HIV Caucus and a longtime survivor of HIV/AIDS.

“When you’re on the national news and you’re talking about men having sex with men and that’s all they’re talking about, but then you add the last part that anyone can get well – this shouldn’t be a leader. “

The abstinence message had an alarming response to community advocates’ response to AIDS decades ago.

Jonathan Tanguy, a health professional, said: “I am very saddened to see this statement from the WHO because in 2018, By 2022 abstinence-based programs have never worked for HIV, not pregnancy, for anything,” he said. Vice President of Education for LGBTQ Equality at Whitman Walker Health Services Provider in DC and GLMA Health Professionals.

Doctors argue with approach

LGBTQ+ public health advocates have reported cases where laboratory workers refused to treat patients who were thought to have monkeypox.

Medical professionals also seem to be struggling to improve their messaging and treatment of their patients, according to National Medical Association President Garfield Clooney.

“For every patient that walks through your door, you use universal precautions because every disease has no phenotype or appearance, and you have to treat everyone exactly the same. You can’t treat someone differently because of their sexual orientation, race, or gender or any other reason,” Clooney said.

“It’s part of our oath and I don’t know why it’s done, but people have certain biases in them, whether it’s implicit or explicit. There are people who jump to conclusions about certain things that they believe to be true, and that may cause certain people to behave in a certain way, but that’s not right.”

Clooney added that the medical community will work to educate members about monkeypox to improve its knowledge.

Because fear of messaging around monkeypox keeps high-risk groups from protecting themselves or seeking treatment, LGBTQ+ health advocates are re-pooling their resources to educate their communities. Human rights campaign published Information What is monkeypox and to clear up some of the misinformation currently on the website and social media.

“What we’re doing is the same thing that we’ve always had to do as a community, that we’ve had to do for ourselves as LGBTQ and often marginalized communities, which is providing the resources that we and the community need,” Baskerville said. he said.