The World Health Organization asks public to propose a new name for monkeypox
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Health & Fitness
Monkey — 3 years ago(August 18, 2022 03:43 AM)
The World Health Organization has asked for help from the public in coming up with a less stigmatising designation for monkeypox.
The UN health agency has for weeks voiced concern about the name of the disease that began making global headlines in May.
Experts have warned the name can be stigmatising to the primates it was named after, but who play little role in its spread, and to the African continent the animals are often associated with.
Recently in Brazil, for instance, there have been reported cases of people attacking monkeys over fear of the disease.
“Human monkeypox was given its name before current best practices in naming diseases,” the WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib told reporters in Geneva.
“We want really to find a name that is not stigmatising,” she added, saying the public consultation could be accessed through a dedicated website where anyone can propose a new name.
Monkeypox received its name because the virus was originally identified in monkeys kept for research in Denmark in 1958, but the disease is found in a number of animals, and most frequently in rodents.
The disease was first discovered in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the spread among humans since then mainly limited to certain west and central African countries where it is endemic.
But in May, cases of the disease, which causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, began spreading rapidly around the world, mainly among men who have sex with men.
More than 31,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide since the start of the year and 12 people have died, according to the WHO, which has designated the outbreak a global health emergency.
While the virus can jump from animals to humans, WHO experts say the recent global spread is due to close-contact transmission between humans.
The UN health agency announced last week that a group of experts it had convened had already agreed on new names for monkeypox virus variants, or clades.
Until now, the two main variants have been named after the geographic regions where they were known to circulate, the Congo Basin and West Africa.
The experts agreed to rename them using Roman numerals instead, calling them Clade I and Clade II. A subvariant of Clade II, now known as Clade IIb, is seen as the main culprit behind the ongoing global outbreak.
Poxy McPoxface, TRUMP-22 or Mpox: these are some of the ideas sent in by the public to the World Health Organization as it seeks a new name for monkeypox.
Often disease names are chosen behind closed doors by a technical committee, but the WHO has this time decided to open up the process to the public. After a slow start, dozens of submissions have now been made from a range of contributors including academics, doctors, and a gay community activist.
They range from the technical (OPOXID-22, submitted by Harvard Medical School emergency physician Jeremy Faust) to the farcical (Poxy McPoxface, submitted by Andrew Yi in an allusion to Boaty McBoatface - almost the name of a British polar research vessel after a public vote on the choice).
Pressure is growing for a new name for the disease, in part because critics say it is misleading, since monkeys are not the original animal host. A group of leading scientists wrote a position paper in June calling for a name that was "neutral, non-discriminatory and non-stigmatizing" amid fears the name can be used in a racist way.
Until this year, monkeypox has mainly spread only in a group of countries in west and central Africa.
"It's very important we find a new name for monkeypox because this is best practice not to create any offence to an ethnic group, a region, a country, an animal, etc.," WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib said on Tuesday.
"The WHO is very concerned by this issue and we want to find a name that is not stigmatising," she added without giving a timeline.
One of the more popular submissions so far is Mpox, submitted by Samuel Miriello, director of a men's health organization RÉZO which is already using the name in its outreach campaigns in Montreal, Canada.
"When you remove the monkey imagery, people seem to understand more quickly that there's an emergency that needs to be taken seriously," he told Reuters.
Another proposal, TRUMP-22, appeared to be refer to former U.S. President Donald Trump who used the controversial term "Chinese virus" for the new coronavirus, although its author said it stood for "Toxic Rash of Unrecognized Mysterious Provenance of 2022."
Submissions mocking the gay community had earlier been posted but were later removed from the WHO site.
The WHO said it would decide among the proposals "according to their scientific validity, their acceptability, their pronounceability (and) whether they can be used in different languages."
"I am sure we will not come up with a ridiculous name," said Chaib.
