SHARE
COPY LINK

HEALTH

French health authority recommends monkeypox vaccination for at-risk groups

French health authorities on Friday urged preemptive vaccination against monkeypox for certain segments of the population, especially those with multiple sexual partners.

French health authority recommends monkeypox vaccination for at-risk groups
Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP

“Men who sleep with men and transgender people with multiple sexual partners, sex workers and people working in places where people go to find sex” were among “the groups most exposed to the virus,” the HAS body said in a statement.

On top of existing advice to offer the vaccine following a confirmed monkeypox infection or at-risk contact, the top advisory body now “recommends offering pre-exposure vaccination” to all three groups.

With 577 cases of monkeypox found in France — 387 in the Île-de-France region which includes capital Paris — and under pressure from LGBTQ and health groups, the health ministry had last week asked the HAS to review the vaccination guidelines.

The HAS only issues advice, but the government usually follows its recommendations.

Monkeypox causes fever, headaches, muscle and back pain for days before rashes, lesions, spots and finally scabs appear on the skin.

There has been a surge in infections since early May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.

The World Health Organization said on Thursday men who sleep with men accounted for three in five of the more than 6,000 confirmed monkeypox infections it had collated from 59 countries.

Genome testing indicates the current outbreak is of a West African form of monkeypox, milder than the Congo Basin group.

French data showed by early July, men engaging in homosexual sex accounted for 97 percent of the cases where data on the patients’ sex lives was available.

And 75 percent were among people who had had multiple partners in the weeks before the infection was detected.

The HAS recalled that monkeypox can be transmitted by skin-to-skin contact by people already exhibiting rash or scabs, as well as via saliva and respiratory droplets.

People can be at risk from touching the damaged skin of an infected person or from spending more than three hours within two metres of them, it said.

The ease of transmission makes contact tracing chains of infection difficult, especially in cases where people have had anonymous sex.

“Faced with the spread of the virus, the kinetics of the epidemic and the difficulty tracing contacts,” targeted preemptive vaccination was the best option, the HAS concluded.

But it added that for health workers caring for those with monkeypox “routine hygiene measures and wearing personal protective equipment makes the risk of infection very low”, advising vaccines only “on a case-by-case basis”.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

HEALTH

France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

Nearly 200 cases of cholera have been reported on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, which is struggling to contain the deadly epidemic.

France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

“As of June 18th, 2024, 193 cases of cholera have been reported in Mayotte,” France’s Santé publique France health agency reported in its weekly update.

Of those, 172 were locally acquired cases, while 21 were in people infected in the neighbouring Comoros archipelago and countries on the African continent.

Cholera is an infectious disease typically causing severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps. It spreads easily in unsanitary conditions.

Mayotte, which is home to around 320,000 people, reported its first locally acquired cases of cholera in late April, according to officials in Paris.

Two people have died since the beginning of the epidemic, one of them a three-year-old girl.

Santé publique France warned there was a particularly high risk of transmission in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, “as long as access to drinking water and sanitation is unsatisfactory”.

French authorities have been criticised for failing to secure access to drinking water to prevent a cholera epidemic in its overseas territory.

President Emmanuel Macron called for cholera to be ‘consigned to the past’ when he hosted a summit on Thursday on vaccine production in Africa.

Many parts of Africa have recently seen fatal outbreaks of cholera, which has highlighted the shortage of local vaccine production.

The Comoros, which has been affected by a cholera epidemic for the past four months, has recorded 134 deaths and more than 8,700 cases, according to a report published by local authorities this month.

SHOW COMMENTS