New York City asked the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday to change the name of the monkeypox virus to avoid stigmatizing patients who could later delay seeking care.
New York has seen more cases of the disease, which the WHO declared a global health emergency over the weekend, than any other US city, with 1,092 infections detected so far.
“We have growing concerns about the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that messaging around the ‘monkey pox’ virus can have on already vulnerable … communities,” said New York Public Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan. in a letter to the head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom. Ghebreyesus dated Tuesday.
The WHO had floated the idea of changing the name of the virus, which is related to the eradicated smallpox virus, during a press conference last month, a proposal Vasan mentioned in his letter.
Vasan referenced the “painful and racist history within which terminology like (monkey pox) is ingrained for communities of color.”
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He pointed to the fact that monkeypox did not actually originate in primates, as its name might suggest, and recalled the negative effects of misinformation in the early days of the HIV epidemic and the racism that faced by Asian communities that was exacerbated by former president Donald Trump. calling Covid-19 the “China virus”.
“Continuing to use the term ‘monkey pox’ to describe the current outbreak may rekindle these traumatic feelings of racism and stigma, particularly for Black and other people of color, as well as members of LGBTQIA communities, and may potentially prevent engage in vital health services because of it,” said Vasan.
Anyone can contract monkeypox, which has long been endemic in central and western Africa, but until now its spread in Europe and the United States has been mostly concentrated among men who have sex with others men
Early symptoms may include fever and fatigue, followed a few days later by a rash that may develop into painful, fluid-filled skin lesions that may last a few weeks before becoming scabs that fall off.
No deaths have been reported in Europe or the United States so far.
So far this year, there have been more than 16,000 confirmed cases in 75 countries, the WHO said on Monday.
A limited number of doses of a smallpox vaccine that protects against monkeypox, called Jynneos, have been given to mainly gay and bisexual men in New York.