Photo: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez (Getty Images)
An emerging disease is ready to get a new coat of paint. World Health Organization officials announced this week that they will soon choose a different name for the disease known as monkeypox, one designed to avoid stigmatization and inaccuracy of its current nickname. The name of the virus behind the disease, also called monkeypox, may also change, but this decision will have to be formally made by a separate group.
Last week, a group of international scientists published a lengthy article on the Virological Open Access site calling for change. They argued that monkeypox is an inappropriate name for the virus and disease, especially in light of its recent global outbreaks that began to be noticed this year.
The virus was first discovered in monkeys in the 1950s, and in the 1970s it became apparent that it could also occasionally infect and make humans sick. But the virus’s natural hosts are thought to be rodents. And until recently, human outbreaks have been limited to certain parts of Africa and have been largely fueled by animal-to-human transmission. This year, however, the virus has infected at least hundreds of people in more than two dozen countries and there is clear evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission. And the genetic signature of the virus found in these newer outbreaks suggests that it has been circulating outside Africa for longer than we knew.
Public health experts still hope the virus can be contained before it settles in new parts of the world. But the scientists behind the virological document say that the version of the monkey’s smallpox that is now spreading around the world should no longer be considered or implicated as an “African” disease, such as through media images that only represent their eruptive symptoms in African residents. Thus, they have called for a future name and labeling that is “neutral, non-discriminatory and non-stigmatizing.”
Currently, for example, there are two known evolutionary branches of the virus, also known as clades. These groups have been called the “Congo” and “West African” clades, after which they were first identified (current global outbreaks are caused by “West African” strains). Scientists proposed that clades should be renamed clades 1, 2, and 3, with 2 and 3 representing what was formerly known as the “West Africa” clade. As a placeholder for the virus that travels around the world, they offered “human smallpox” or hMPXV.
At the time of the article, the authors noted that they had been in contact with the WHO regarding a name change. And on Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the WHO was working on a new name for the disease. In particular, the WHO has made a formal policy since 2015 to avoid names for diseases that could have negative effects on geographical regions, people or economic sectors, such as “Spanish flu”, the inaccurate nickname given to the flu virus. after 1918. pandemic (Spain was only the first country to report the cases widely and not where it originated).
No doubt, the new labeling of WHO monkeypox will be followed by countries and public health organizations around the world. But most importantly, the agency is not responsible for designating the formal scientific name of a virus, this depends on the International Committee on Virus Taxonomy (ICTV), which is headed by virologists in the field. And the names chosen by WHO and ICTV can often differ. Covid-19, for example, is the name of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, although the WHO and public health organizations will sometimes use the abbreviation to call it the covid-19 virus. The authors of the virological document say that they have also been in discussions with ICTV, and that WHO and ICTV can announce their respective name changes at the same time, as they did with covid-19 / SARS-CoV-2. .
Whether the monkey’s smallpox name ends up being, we’ll probably hear it a lot in the near future. Next week, the WHO convenes a meeting to decide whether this year’s outbreaks should be designated as a public health emergency of international interest, an alert that was last called for by the covid-19 pandemic in progress.