By Tyrone MacLean-Wilson
Tyrone is staff at FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE

Radio Regent host and community ambassador, Murshida S Mueen, interviews Dr. Aisha Khatib about the monkeypox virus that throughout the city and world as a whole. Dr. Khatib is an Assistant Professor at University of Toronto, working in the department of family and community medicine. She also specializes in travel and tropical medicine and also works at a sexual health clinic in Toronto.

In this episode of Downtown East Vaccine Radio, our guest Dr. Khatib, explains what is monkeypox,  how it is contracted, origin, which population is most affected and what preventative measures people can take to protect themselves from the contracting the virus and limiting the spread. Aisha, also stresses that the virus is not limited to any particular group and that anyone can catch monkeypox.

Dr. Khatib, explains the list of early symptoms of monkeypox which involves, muscle aches, enlarged lymph nodes, fever, feeling tired, swollen glands. Roughly four days later you could develop rashes, bumps that looks similar to pimples at first that can indent or umbilicate and turn into blisters known as pox lesions. These lesions then ulcerate over time and then they scab over.

The lesions and blisters usually appear on the face, the hands, arms and genital area and she mentions that they can be quite painful. The infections seem to primarily spread through prolonged sexual contact. Vaccination for monkeypox stopped in the 1970's, however due to the recent outbreak the vaccines have returned for access and have been rolled out in some of the COVID19 Vaccine clinics.
More information about this topic can be obtained from the following resources:

www.canada.ca/en/public-health
www.toronto.ca/community-people/health-wellness-care