On paper, France appears to be armed to deal with the monkeypox epidemic, which has been spreading in Europe since last May. There is already an effective treatment against this zoonosis, people at higher risk are well identified and eager to be vaccinated. Even the screening technique is operational, so much so that the High Health Authority requested its reimbursement in a statement made public this Monday.
Yes, but now it’s stuck. Since the arrival of the disease in French territory, the number of positive cases has not stopped increasing, reaching 1,567 on July 21.
“We are waiting for them to overwhelm us,” sighs Benjamin Davido, an infectious disease specialist at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine). While he somehow tries to inoculate the influx of concerned people who flock to his service, he can only see France’s mistakes regarding this growing epidemic. “We run the risk of the situation getting out of control in September,” he warns.
A necessary international coordination
At the international level, the National Health Organization (WHO) is trying to mobilize states. On Saturday, July 23, the United Nations agency triggered its highest level of alert for the smallpox epidemic. A rare decision, justified by alarming figures: 16,000 cases have been recorded in more than 75 countries, while the disease was generally limited to Africa, especially around the Congo basin.
In the ranks of the scientific community, the decision surprised. “We really didn’t expect it,” he told our fellow students. Parisian Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, head of infectious diseases at the Henri-Mondor hospital in Créteil (Val-de-Marne). But as Benjamin Davido explains for BFMTV.com, such an approach is justified, even more so in the current context.
“Such a decision can make it possible to create consultations and come up with solutions, in particular at the level of the European Union. If we only attack the problem by countries, we will not be successful. And especially in this period. It is summer, there is a lot of miscegenation, with people who he goes abroad, where he can potentially be infected, ”explains the infectologist.
At the beginning of the epidemic, it was a super pride organized on the island of Gran Canaria, in Spain, which caused new cases. Two Italian participants had thus returned to Rome with the virus.
vaccination errors
But the WHO statement is not without questions. A recent study, with more than 500 cases and published in The New England journal of medicine, it clearly points to the sexual activity of gay and bisexual men as the main source of transmission. So why doesn’t the organization call for a massive return to condom use?
“We need a reinforcement injection of the condom, mount advertising campaigns about it. We know how to do it, it is imperative to do it again”, says Benjamín Davido. Especially since, according to Public Health France, 69% of the cases investigated in France and who are not HIV carriers are on PrEP. It is a preventive treatment, which allows a person exposed to HIV, particularly during unprotected sexual intercourse, not to contract the infection.
For Benjamín Davido, this transition to maximum alert must also be accompanied by a quantified vaccination strategy, “with a starting point and an end point.” However, the start of the monkeypox vaccination campaign, open since the beginning of July to contact cases and people at risk, including men in relationships with men with multiple partners and sex workers, is more than slow in the hexagon .
Although the government refused to communicate the number of doses available, Stubborn revealed on July 21 that 30,000 doses had been made available. The Aides association, for its part, estimates the need at 300,000 doses.
“To vaccinate the target population with at least one dose at the end of September, which is not a very ambitious goal, it would be necessary to carry out at least 2,000 daily injections. However, at present, in Ile-de-France, which is the focus of the epidemic, we vaccinate barely 3,000 per week”, Benjamin Davido despairs, wondering at the same time “why there is no ‘Quick my dose ‘from monkeypox? Because the organization of appointments is also highlighted.
Some vaccination centers only have a phone number available to you. However, in the face of massive demand from a public eager to get vaccinated, the lines are saturated. “We cannot attend to those who call to cancel. So that at the end of the day we have doses left, ”continues Benjamín Davido, who calls on the State not to weigh the entire weight of this epidemic on the hospital.
The “strategy from nothing”
So many difficulties that add to the structural problems faced by hospitals in France. Overwhelmed emergency services, lack of weapons to vaccinate, all after more than two years of fighting the Covid-19 epidemic. However, simple measures could already be taken. Currently, there is no priority audience for vaccination. For a contact person to have as much luck, or difficulty, in finding a date as a person at risk.
Faced with so many errors, a question inevitably arises. What is the government waiting for to take into account the reality of the epidemic. “A second wave, which this time would affect children and more broadly heterosexual people?” asks Benjamín Davido. “We have a bit of the impression that the executive is practicing the strategy out of nowhere”, he ends up despairing.
In other parts of the world, the epidemic is treated with little consideration. In New York, the epicenter of the disease in the United States, the homosexual community is criticizing the management of the crisis by the Biden administration. “Manhattan is the epicenter of the epidemic, but the city has not had its fair share of vaccines. We have had 30% of the infections, but only 10% of the doses,” she lamented with the World Jason Cianciotto, vice president of an association to fight AIDS.
But Benjamin Davido brushes aside the argument that would consist in saying that French difficulties are in fact global: “Why always hide behind other countries? Why wouldn’t there be, for once, a French exception?”
Source: BFM TV
