the governor of new york state has declared an emergency in response to the monkey pox outbreak kathy huckle said that more than a quarter of all monkey pox cases in the united states have been detected in new york among other new measures the executive order will enable more health professionals including pharmacists and midwives to administer vaccines meanwhile spain announced a second death from monkey pox the two cases in spain and one in brazil at the first known fatalities outside the african continent let's go now to claire newsnapp she's the president of the british association for
sexual health and hiv joins me now live from sheffield uh in england um we're told that mostly infections are mild usually the infections of monkey pox are mild how concerning are these deaths that i just mentioned there the two in spain and one in brazil well i mean i think it's really critical that people understand that monkey pox has been associated with um a mortality rate of up to 20 in some developing countries in the past so the more new infections that we see the more likely we are to see people who have other health
conditions and um not fully developed or um impaired immune systems uh becoming sick because of this and i have to say it's really important yes so some no it's fine i mean it it is partly access to early health care um but also other health conditions that haven't yet been attended to or identified because of other issues with healthcare it is really important that people understand that this wealth is being described as a mild condition it is already significantly impacting on people's health and it is quite a painful condition for many people yeah and what
about the vaccine well it's the smallpox vaccine actually isn't it and and antivirals how effective are they so they we don't um know how effective the smallpox vaccine will be when rolled out on a large scale um the data suggests that it's going to be at least 85 percent effective we suspect it may be more than that but until we've rolled it out and surveillance to um those that have received it and get ongoing infections we won't know for absolutely sure we know it will be better than having no protection and the antivirals that are
available are effective and but not everybody is going to have access to those so currently we are not giving those um out to everybody and there are trials going on look at what hap looking at what happens when you give those to people with different levels of severity of condition and presumably if if other places declared an emergency and that might help the access to vaccines would it well i mean there has to be an international call for massive upscaling of this vaccine the who announced that this was an emergency to public health and and
that part of that response will be massively upscaling production we need equitable access so we want more vaccine in england and wales and northern ireland and scotland but we also need vaccine going to developing countries that's up until now have not received any vaccine even though there has been a recent increase in vaccine production it's also really important that we stress that just having vaccine isn't enough this country has a significant problem with capacity in its sexual health services and then without that capacity being increased rapidly by increasing resources and funding we're not going to
be able to deliver the vaccine to the numbers that we need okay thank you very much that's claire duesner talking to us there
