If the NHS can be negatively categorised for one thing and one thing only (it can’t it’s much worse than that) then that would be incompetence. Not just incompetence in how it treats the patients who enter NHS hospitals or try to access GP services, which too often has lethal results, but how it manages to inform the public about health matters. There is unfortunately a dearth of information available when people consult the NHS about some health issues.
A good case in point is that of Monkeypox. Whilst this is, unlike Covid, a disease that the medical profession has been aware of and which has been studied for decades, the sudden rise in cases outside its normal geographical area is worrying. It is especially a matter of concern that this disease is now said to be spreading sexually. This is because if I learned anything from living through the early days of the AIDS crisis it is that as well as worrying about about the STD’s that we know about such as syphilis and similar conditions, we need to be concerned about the STD’s that we don’t know about. The world erroneously thought in the early 1980’s that STD’s were beaten, that antibiotics had removed the threat that these diseases pose. Then along came AIDS a disease that although now manageable as a chronic condition is in no way curable.
People are concerned about Monkeypox, so am I, especially if it is spreading sexually or worse if this disease has entered Britain’s feral rat population as the main animal vector for Monkeypox is not monkeys or apes but rats. But, unlike AIDS there is a strong degree of hope when it comes to this disease. The Smallpox vaccine, something not given routinely in Britain since the early 1970’s as the disease was effectively eradicated in the UK at this time, is said to confer approximately 85% protection against Monkeypox.
Pox family viruses, even after the worldwide eradication of Smallpox in the late 1970’s are still a problem and there’s the distinct danger that due to the fear that pox virus engenders in people, pox viruses would be a biological weapon of choice for either a rogue state or a terrorist group. Because of this threat of pox viruses states that are able to prepare for a pox virus outbreak such as the USA have over the years stockpiled lots of smallpox vaccines.
The news that the current Smallpox vaccines produce a useful level of immunity against Monkeypox is quite widespread from what I can gather. People understand that a long established vaccine against Smallpox exists and could be useful in ring vaccinating the contacts of those who are affected by Monkeypox. If this disease spreads further and we get more non-sexual community transmission or zoonotic transmission in the UK via rodents, then I’d most certainly think about having my child vaccinated against smallpox and signing up for a smallpox booster for myself.
But what happens when Britons consult the NHS website about smallpox or smallpox vaccines? When Britons contact the NHS’s online presence and use the search terms ‘smallpox’ or ‘smallpox vaccine’ the result is zero, nada, nothing. The NHS’s expensively produced and managed website cannot get it together enough to put up a page either about the now vanquished disease of Smallpox or Smallpox vaccines or their repurposing for Monkeypox.
As I said earlier, when you talk to people about Monkeypox, if they’ve any sense then they’ve clocked the link with other members of this viral family such as Smallpox. They also understand that until there is a specific Monkeypox vaccine, that the Smallpox vaccine offers a reasonable level of protection.
The NHS should, if only for the purposes of giving out general information about diseases, have had a few lines on their site about both Smallpox and its eradication and more importantly should have had information about Smallpox vaccines and their effectiveness against other poxvirus family members. Of course the NHS would make the argument that they don’t need to use resources to inform people about dead diseases but the pox virus family is not dead, we can see that from the continued existence of other pox viruses apart from Smallpox.
It would not have cost the NHS much to put up a few lines on their site about how Smallpox is no more and maybe insert a link to one of the various websites and organisations that carry a wealth of information about Smallpox eradication. It would cost the NHS a similar relatively tiny amount of money or other resources to inform people about the protection provided against Monkeypox by Smallpox vaccination. This lack of information could be remedied at a fraction of the cost of what the NHS spends daily on worthless parasites such as diversity, inclusion and equity staff.
It is incredibly frustrating that an organisation that is as large and as well funded as the NHS cannot get it together to create two short pages of text about Smallpox and its relation to Monkeypox and about Smallpox vaccines. Whilst the NHS’s page on Monkeypox itself is pretty informative there is little in the way of information as to this diseases links with other members of the Poxvirus family or to direct people who have searched ‘smallpox vaccine’ to easily click back to the Monkeypox page. There’s also mention of a vaccine for Monkeypox but no mention of what the vaccine itself was originally designed for.
This is all a bit of a fail by the NHS but then those of us who have to live with the NHS have become depressingly used to the many and varied failures of this organisation.
