When it comes to mild cases, the Montreal doctor said his patients don’t need much medical support. (Guillaume Steben/ETN News) ‘Stay isolated’ if lesions appear Antoine Cloutier-Blais’ Montreal clinic began seeing patients with unusual and often painful bodily injuries. WATCH | WHO urges countries to stop transmission of monkeypox:Īs global monkeypox outbreaks made headlines, Dr. “But given the current cases we’re seeing and the outstanding questions about the dynamics of monkeypox transmission in our community, we’re letting people know.” “Of course, monkeypox can affect anyone, any gender, any sexual orientation,” said Dane Griffiths, director of the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance in Ontario, where a dozen cases have been reported. , which prompted awareness campaigns by and for members of this community. WHO.Īlthough there are reports of recently infected women around the world, the bulk of infections in this global outbreak – now at around 1,000 confirmed cases and counting – have been among men who have sex with men. This includes skin-to-skin contact, even if someone has only minimal lesions in their genital areas, or through respiratory droplets if someone has a lesion inside their mouth, noted Lewis of the l. Monkeypox is not known to be a sexually transmitted infection, but it can be spread through various forms of close contact with others. “When examined in hospital, the penile lesions were largely crusted, and the lesions on the hands and lower extremities were painless papular pustules,” the case study authors wrote. The lesions became painful and itchy, then the man developed a fever three days later, with the rash spreading to his torso, face and limbs in the days that followed, necessitating two visits to his home. The man’s first symptoms were painless pustules on his penis, which quickly worsened. , including some people who have suffered from rectal inflammation.Ī case study published in the medical journal of infectious diseases Eurosurveillance examined the experience of an HIV-positive man in his 30s who was diagnosed with monkeypox in May after traveling and engaging in sexual activity in Europe.
Health officials in Quebec are scrambling to contain the province’s monkeypox outbreak, as attention turns to keeping people safe at summer gatherings.īody damage from this virus is also thought to usually begin around the head, before progressing to the arms and legs, but Rao said US patients first experienced rashes in the genital or perianal regions. Quebec health officials scramble to contain monkeypox outbreak WATCH | Quebec authorities are working to contain the monkeypox outbreak: “Monkey pox can masquerade as other diseases,” said Dr Rosamund Lewis, Canadian physician and technical lead for the monkey pox outbreak at the World Health Organization (WHO). Agam Rao, a poxvirus and rabies branch physician at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in an interview with the medical journal JAMA.įor clinicians unfamiliar with the virus, it can also be difficult to differentiate some monkeypox infections from chickenpox – or some sexually transmitted infections like herpes and syphilis. “In these new cases, what we hear is that those the symptoms can be really mild or even not noticed at all,” said Dr.
Yet for recent patients in the United States, the appearance of a rash was often the first warning sign that they were sick.
Monkeypox often appears as a flu-like illness, characterized by symptoms such as fever, chills, and muscle stiffness that may precede the telltale lesions. Photos taken in a clinical setting show monkeypox lesions on patients in the UK during a global outbreak of cases beyond typical endemic regions for the virus in Africa.