Monkeypox is a viral and infectious disease that is endemic in parts of West and Central Africa. It is called monkeypox because it was first identified in laboratory monkeys. While it is categorised in the same virus family such as smallpox, its symptoms are milder and people normally recover within fourteen to thirty days. In some instances, the virus is deadly. Monkeypox is also spread by close contact so it can be relatively easily contained through measures such as self-isolation and hygiene.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO): “Since 13 May 2022, cases of Monkeypox have been reported to WHO from 12 Member States that are not endemic for Monkeypox virus, across three WHO regions. Epidemiological investigations are ongoing, however, reported cases thus far have no established travel links to endemic areas. Based on currently available information, cases have mainly but not exclusively been identified amongst men who have sex with men (MSM) seeking care in primary care and sexual health clinics.”
Following the detection of Monkeypox in several European countries such as Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, Sweden and United States of America, there has been an increase in stigmatising rhetoric which is fuelling anti African bias. Just as with Covid-19, the way the western media is reporting on Monkeypox is motivated by Afrophobia or Afroscepticism, and not science. As a matter of fact, by the time of writing this piece, majority of African countries had not even detected any single case of Monkeypox.
Stigma and racism also emerged in the western media with some media outlets such as Time magazine attaching an image of an African to depict the outbreak of Monkeypox in Europe. Following this anti-African bias, the United Nations’ AIDS agency condemned some reporting on the Monkeypox virus as racist and homophobic, warning that this could undermine response to the growing outbreak. UNAIDS also indicated that while “a significant proportion” of recent Monkeypox cases have been identified among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, transmission is most likely via close physical contact with a Monkeypox sufferer and could affect anyone.
The Foreign Press Association Africa (FPAA), a Pan African organisation non-profit membership organisation of journalists covering Africa for the international media in Africa also expressed discontentment over the way the stories were being covered.
“It is therefore disturbing for European and North American media outlets to use stock images bearing persons with dark/black and African skin complexion to depict an outbreak of the disease in the United Kingdom and North America,” said FPAA, adding that “If you are talking about the outbreak of Monkeypox in Europe or the Americas, you should use images from hospitals across Europe or the Americas? Or in the absence of such use a collection of electron micrographs with labelled subcellular structures.”
While singling out African countries was very unfair, non-scientific and discriminatory, some media houses in the West were unrelenting in serving their readers with racist red meat. Some went to claim that Monkeypox is an African disease. This fits a racist pattern and practice of analogising diseases with blacks. It is the reason why some people throw banana peels at black soccer players because in their mind a black person is a “monkey” that belongs to the zoo where they are fed bananas.
This is despite the United Nations stating that “stigmatising rhetoric can quickly disable evidence-based response by stoking cycles of fear, driving people away from health services, impeding efforts to identify cases, and encouraging ineffective, punitive measures.”
Currently there is no evidence to suggest that the Monkeypox outbreak originated from Africa. With Covid-19, WHO declared that variants of interest and variants of concern will receive a designated Greek letter listed on its website. The naming system was developed after the WHO consulted experts following reports that labeling the variants by their location of discovery is “stigmatising” and “discriminatory.”
A political commentator who spoke to this publication indicated that the repackaging of Monkeypox we are seeing in the media is a preview of what would have happened had Monkeypox outbreak been first detected in Africa.
“The way some western countries were quick to shut their doors to Africans over the Omicron variant shows that the same countries would have closed their borders to Africans had Monkeypox been first detected on the continent,” says Ronald Dintle. He also adds that some media houses want to propagate lies that Monkeypox is an African disease.
The Foreign Press Association also encourages editorial managers in news outlets based outside Africa to update their image policies and censure their staff from using images of Africans, people of African descent or people living in Africa “to depict outbreaks of diseases or calamities.”
However with no end in sight to Monkeypox, African leaders are being encouraged to have a harmonised approach to counter racial anti-African bias from the Western media, something which was lacking at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
