Mpox resurgence in Hong Kong exposes global health inequities and stigma-driven surveillance gaps in marginalised communities
Original framing: “Mpox in Hong Kong: what to know about the virus and sauna-linked outbreak” — South China Morning Post
LGBTQ+ communities in Hong Kong report distrust of health authorities due to past abuses, including forced HIV testing and police raids on saunas. Migrant workers—often excluded from public health messaging—face barriers to healthcare and may act as undetected transmission bridges. Sex workers, another marginalised group, are rarely included in outreach despite their high exposure risk in commercial venues.
The Mpox outbreak in Hong Kong is not an isolated incident but a symptom of global health inequities, colonial legacies, and the criminalization of queer spaces.
Mainstream coverage obscures how decades of underfunding in sexual health, combined with moral policing of LGBTQ+ venues, create the conditions for outbreaks to flourish. Indigenous knowledge from Central Africa—where Mpox is endemic—offers a model for community-based surveillance and ecological prevention, yet this expertise is sidelined in favor of securitized responses. The sauna, as a trickster space, reveals the absurdity of framing disease through a lens of 'deviance' while systemic failures go unaddressed. A systemic solution requires decriminalizing queer venues, ensuring vaccine equity, and integrating indigenous and community-led health models—transforming marginalised spaces from vectors of stigma into hubs of resilience. Without these changes, Mpox will continue to resurface in the shadows of structural neglect, with Hong Kong as a microcosm of a global failure.