Citing stigma, WHO renaming monkeypox
The World Health Organization will officially rename monkeypox, in light of concerns about stigma and racism surrounding the virus that has infected over 1,600 people in more than two dozen countries.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced Tuesday morning that the organization is “working with partners and experts from around the world on changing the name of monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes.”
More than 30 international scientists said last week the monkeypox label is discriminatory and stigmatizing, and there’s an “urgent” need to rename it.
The current name doesn’t fit with WHO guidelines that recommend avoiding geographic regions and animal names, a spokesperson said. The actual animal source of monkeypox, which has been found in a wide variety of mammals, remains unknown.
“In the context of the current global outbreak, continued reference to, and nomenclature of this virus being African is not only inaccurate but is also discriminatory and stigmatizing,” the scientists’ group said in a letter online.
The WHO is consulting experts in orthopoxviruses — the family to which monkeypox belongs — on more appropriate names, a spokesperson said.
Monkeypox has been endemic in west and central Africa for decades, but cases have primarily been associated with spillover from animals, rather than human-to-human transmission. While it’s still unclear how monkeypox entered humans in the current outbreak, the virus has been spreading through close, intimate contact.
Other groups have warned of stigma in communication about monkeypox.
In late May, the Foreign Press Association of Africa asked western media to stop using photos of Black people to highlight what the condition looks like in stories about the U.S. or U.K. In the weeks since, scientists have also raised the point that the lesions patients are presenting with in this current outbreak have, in many cases, been distinct from what’s been documented in Africa.
DISCUSSIONS
Meanwhile, the WHO convene an emergency committee of experts to determine if the expanding monkeypox outbreak should be considered a global health emergency.
Tedros said Tuesday he decided to convene the emergency committee on June 23 because the virus has shown “unusual” recent behavior by spreading in countries well beyond parts of Africa where it is endemic.
“We believe that it needs also some coordinated response because of the geographic spread,” he told reporters.
Declaring monkeypox to be an international health emergency would give it the same designation as the covid-19 pandemic and mean that WHO considers the normally rare disease a continuing threat to countries globally.
The U.K. said Monday it had 470 cases of monkeypox across the country, with the vast majority in men who have sex with men.
Tedros said more than 1,600 cases and nearly 1,500 suspected cases have been reported this year in 39 countries. A total of 72 deaths have been reported but none in the newly affected countries, which include Britain, Canada and the United States.
The meeting of outside experts could also help improve understanding about the virus, Tedros said, as WHO released new guidelines about vaccinating against monkeypox.