While we are still immersed in the coronavirus pandemic, another disease worries part of the population. And are monkeypox cases increasing daily. It has not yet reached Melilla, but there are many people from Melilla who do not know what they are facing when talking about this disease.
From public health they report that in Spain there are already almost 5,000 declared cases of monkeypox and two deaths. The same plan that was approved by the Public Health Commission is applied throughout the national territory. In which a protocol for the detection and management of cases of the disease is included, in addition to the vaccination recommendations for the current epidemic of the disease.
The Minister of Public Health, Francisca Maeso, assures that the application of the program is similar in Melilla to that of the rest of the country and that it was activated from the start of the epidemic, as happened in the rest of the Autonomous Communities. .
However, no cases of monkeypox have yet been recorded in the Autonomous City, despite its spread throughout the peninsula. Among the inhabitants of Melilla, the lack of knowledge about this new disease is palpable. Their only source of information, they say, is what they see on television, and even so the data they know is scarce.
“I only know what I see on TV,” says María. What you know is what is reported in the news, a mishmash of information that can be confusing and increase the stigma that is created around the disease. She heard on the news that gays and lesbians are most likely to be infected, but she says it’s nothing more than a way of blaming ‘the weaker ones’, as happened there. forty years ago with HIV. .
The most widespread data is the form of transmission: by close contact. “I know there’s a lot of controversy because they say it’s sex-related,” says another Melillan.
On the other hand, some take it with humor. They know “neither that of the monkey nor that of the monkey” and attribute it to the tricks of politicians. “The biggest disease there is is politicians and no one can fix it,” Ildefonso says, joking that next year we will have “orangutan pox.”
And it is that the population is still exhausted by the coronavirus. It looks like it’s going to end, but the cases go up and then go down again, like that constantly. because we do not leave one when we are already in another. “I did not have the covid. Hopefully I don’t catch that one now,” Vicky says, referring to monkeypox.
Although after more than two years of the pandemic that we have experienced in the body, some are hopeful and do not believe that this disease will have the same magnitude. “If we passed covid, so did monkeypox,” says Fernando, another Melillan.
Symptoms and transmission
The most obvious symptom are the rashes that occur on the skin, the images of which have spread like wildfire since the onset of this disease. These “rings of blisters,” as some people have called them, are called a rash (a pinkish rash caused by certain infectious diseases).
However, before it appears, infected people may suffer from fever, myalgia, headache and general fatigue. Additionally, monkeypox can cause mouth sores, perianal pain, or tonsillitis.
Much has been made of how this new virus spreads, and the so-called close contact caused a stir, causing unwarranted stigma around the disease.
The contagion occurs from the beginning of the eruption until the healing of the lesions, that is to say when a new layer of skin appears. Throughout this period, monkeypox can be transmitted from person to person.
The routes of transmission are diverse. The best known of all is due to close physical contact with the infected person. This case raised questions about the proximity of this contact, attributing it to sexual practices. Although during these there is a good chance of getting infected for obvious reasons, it can also happen through saliva, clothing and other surfaces.
It has a seven day incubation period and infected people take between 2 and 4 weeks to recover. Most cases are usually mild and the treatments with which it is fought are antivirals and vaccines.
The Ministry of Health is responsible for the allocation of vaccines to the Autonomous Communities and Autonomous Cities, and this is done according to the people for whom it is indicated. For this reason, once the relevant doses have been administered, subject to prior justification of their use to the Ministry, other vaccines may be received for administration to other persons.
For now, it is known that the ministry has awarded the autonomous city a total of four vaccines that are on the way. They are aimed at four people from Melilla who have risk factors for contracting the disease.
Even so, at the moment the monkeypox has not yet reached Melilla, but many citizens do not exclude the idea that it is hiding and is “just around the corner”. They assure that there is a large transit of people in the city, both from the peninsula and from Morocco, so it is only a matter of time before this disease also breaks out here.