And now, in the wake of the still-surging Covid pandemic, we may have discovered another way to facilitate the emergence of viruses: by putting new limits on public health measures. “Restrictions on the authority and the power given to public health is not only concerning, it is frustrating, it is frightening, and it’s going to not only hurt us in the short term, it’s also going to hurt us in the long term,” Madad said.
A rising chorus of experts has called for stopping new infections at the source and monitoring potential new pathogens in people before they spread across the globe. But monkeypox illustrates how far behind we are in this task. African researchers, who have immense experience with monkeypox and other pressing diseases, have frequently been marginalized in conversations and research around infectious disease—even now, during this outbreak.
“You have to think about tackling the ongoing outbreaks in Europe and America and other regions, but you also have to think about how you allocate and share these resources to allow scientists who have been working on this in Africa for 50 years to actually deploy the same strategies to protect the populations and curb the outbreaks in these areas,” Titanji said. “If we had taken monkeypox more seriously as a global health threat, there would have been more investment in the research to help us understand these very complex dynamics between humans, the environment, and the animals with which we share this environment.”