‘It’s Skin-shivering’: What to Know About Monkeypox Written article and graphics by

Frances Vincent Decena

ThelightofMonkeypox, a viral disease known to cause puss-filled lesions on the skin, has started to glow since the beginning of May 2022. In July, as global infections started to rise in numbers, the World HealthOrganizationdeclaredthe disease a global health emergency—branding Monkeypox an ”extraordinary event” that required the highest priorityof containment.

First observed in monkeys from a laboratory in Denmark, Monkeypoxisazoonoticdisease that involves animal-to-human transmission. According to the BBC, the disease is caused by the Monkeypox virus—a type of virus that belongs in the orthopox genus from the poxviridaefamily.

Howdoesittransmit?

Monkeypox is transmitted through contactwithaninfected person’s wounds, scabs, lesions, and puss. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the disease can also be transmitted through contact with infected respiratory fluid—for instance, coughs, saliva, and mucus.

Monkeypox, however, does not spread through sexual intercourse. The CDC says that Monkeypox is not a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI), and the reason behind its transmission through sexual contact is due to open exposure toinfectedfluids.

Althoughstatisticsshowthat gay men are primarily the ones being affected by the disease, this does not indicate that Monkeypox only occurs in the queer or male population—the diseaseis,infact,notbrandedon gender. The reason for its common occurrence in this sexually-biased sphere is due to thefactthat

What’s the Difference between Monkeypox, Chickenpox,andSmallpox?

Chickenpox, Monkeypox, and Smallpox are three distinct

The Rise of a Rebellion: The Resistance of Bacteria

By Frances Vincent Decena

diseases. Chickenpox, unlike Monkeypox and smallpox, is caused by a herpes virus. However, smallpox, a severely lethal disease known to have claimed 300 million lives in 1900 alone (but is now fully eradicated), is more closely related to monkeypox—being that they come from the same orthopoxvirusfamily.

The only grateful difference that smallpox and monkeypox have is that monkeypox is far less fatal and has caused lesser deaths.

On the other hand, Monkeypox is separated into two varying clades: the West African and Central African clade—the Central African being deadlier and having known to catalyze more acute effects.

Whatdoesitcause?

Monkeypox causes lesions to pop up on the skin, in which they progress through four stages: from macular, papular, drug Penicillin, which propelled medical sciences into its golden age by the mid-1950s. Penicillin waspliedtotreatbacterial-borne diseases, like throat infections, meningitis, and syphilis, that posed hazards to human health in the past. Like all antibiotic drugs, Penicillin works by killing the bacteria or hindering itsprocessofreproduction. vesicular, and onto pustular, each indicating their own level of severity. After progressing into the pustular stage, the lesions become scabs and eventuallydryoff.

While that may sound like a diabolic relief, some bacteria haveevolvedtorebelfromthis.

When antibiotics are used by people with infections, some remaining bacteria that may havesurvivedthiskill-wavemay remain dwelling in our repository. These “surviving” bacteria develop an immunity to the antibiotic that it was often exposed to. And as it incubates in our system, it multiplies an multiplies until it is exposed to theopensurface.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Monkeypox endures for 2-4 weeks. The organization stated thattheincubationperiodforthe disease is 3-17 days, where the infected person may “still feel fine”during.

Monkeypoxmanifestsfeverlike symptoms such as chills, exhaustion, headache, sore throat, nasal congestion, and coughs. Often, people tend to manifest the symptoms before the development of rashes. On othertimes,though,it’stheother wayaround.

Global Count; First

Recorded Case in the Philippines

As of July 2022, 20,300 cases of Monkeypox have been confirmed in 70 countries that arenotendemictoit.

The Philippines detected its first case of Monkeypox on July 29ofa31-year-oldwhorecently came overseas. The Department of Health (DOH) says that they are closely monitoring trace information on the 10 people whom the 31-year-old had contactwith.

Health Undersecretary BeverlyHostatedthatthecaseis currently being eyed on, and the people subjected are undergoing strict isolation, monitoring at home. She says that systems are also being primed in order to containthedisease.

“Our systems are in place, but we all need to work together and be vigilant,” she said. “Especially the key population groupwhoareatmostrisk.”

Bacteriumaresmall, butlarge in capacity: before the wonder drug antibiotic had been invented in the 1920s, a simple scratch from anything can cause an infection that would have probably killed you. The reason that things like this rarely happen now is because we’ve become resistant to bacterial infections.

But what will happen if bacteriumbecomeimmunetoit?

The first antibiotic drug was produced in 1910, going by the name Salvarsan. In 1928, Alexander Fleming accidentally uncovered the wonders of the

Ifbacteriumbecomeresistantto antibiotics completely, we’ll have no way of controlling or treating bacterial infections that propagate in human society as we know it. The advancements in the world of medical sciences that we’ve been bent so hard on developing for the past centuries would only prove feeble, if not bleak, to the rise of antibacterial resistance. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) so aptly puts it as a “postantibacterialera”.

According to Charles Penn, a coordinator of WHO on antimicrobial resistance, “we will lose the ability to treat a range of serious conditions such will lose the ability to treat a range of serious conditions such as blood stream infections, pneumonia, tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV. And the benefits of medical treatments such as cancer chemotherapy and major surgery will also becomemuchriskierandwillbe lost.”

So how can we decrease the problem from propelling further and further? WHO states that antibiotic resistance is escalated by the “misuse and overuse” of antibiotics. To mitigate its acceleration, we are indebted to: use antibiotics exactly as they are prescribed by our medical professionals; hinder from reinforcing the idea that you need antibiotics even if you don’t really need to; disengage from using or sharing scrapped antibiotics.

In order to further fortify this, said the organization, policy makers would need to reinforce laws that prevent people from unconsciously consuming the drug, as well as integrating a well-maneuverednationalaction plan addressing the issue as a primary concern. This would emphasize why we need to tackle the problem now more thaneverbefore.

We’re currently fighting over a pandemic and an invisible war againstabacterialrebellion.And it seems that the world is slowly failing to resist its stand against the latter. But more technological advancements may pose a remedy to this deescalation of events: for instance,withtheriseofAI,new antibiotics are currently being sought using the benefits that thisnewtechnologyhasinstore.

According to The Conversation, “AI can identify new antibiotics thatarestructurallydistinctfrom currently available ones, and are effective against a wide range of bacteria.”