Knowledge, awareness, and worry about human monkeypox and attitude toward its vaccination in non endemic countries: a concise critical review

Abstract

Abstract Background: In May 2022, the world has seen the emergence of human monkeypox, a new zoonotic viral disease in multiple non endemic countries. This health threat has been associated with high worry especially after the COVID-19 catastrophe. Also, the population is exposed to a huge amounts of information making them exposed to false information which could lead to embracing conspiracy theories. Thus evaluating the level of knowledge and the attitude toward vaccination are of great importance to raise them for the categories with low levels of knowledge and acceptance. This scoping review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines with the aim to evaluate the level of knowledge and awareness about monkeypox and the attitude toward its vaccination by selecting studies. Results: The selection process allowed to include 16 studies in this review. These studies were conducted in 10 countries in Europe and Asia. 9 studies were exclusively related to monkeypox knowledge and awareness, 2 studies were exclusively related to monkeypox vaccines while 5 studies treated the two subjects. These studies were mainly conducted among healthcare workers or among the general population. Results showed an unsatisfactory level of knowledge and awareness with some categories including physicians and aged individuals as the most informed. Regarding vaccination, Results showed that vaccine hesitancy is still common for both healthcare workers except among Chinese healthcare workers where the rate of vaccine acceptance was estimated at 90.1%. Conclusions: This review could be helpful in the understanding of the knowledge and awareness and vaccines hesitancy in the first months of the emergence of the HMPX by comparing their evolution in the future studies.