NEWS

Monkeypox: Have we learned nothing from AIDS or COVID?

By Dr. Lyndon Haviland

July 27, 2022

TheHill.com

This weekend, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern.” That’s a rare designation from the WHO, one they’ve reserved to describe just two other diseases — COVID-19 and polio. Yet once again, the nation seems blissfully ignorant to the early warning signs of an outbreak that bears striking resemblance to the start of COVID-19 and the AIDS epidemic. …

If COVID-19 proved anything it showed that a piecemeal response to a global health crisis is a recipe for disaster. We need our elected leaders to step forward, declare monkeypox a national emergency, and announce a coordinated approach to confront it. We need more vaccines, more testing centers, more education and more funding. If we don’t act now, we’ll simply repeat the mistakes of the past.