The World Health Organization says it is holding an open forum to change the name of monkeypox, after some critics worried the name could be seen as discriminatory and stigmatizing.
The WHO said the decision was made after meeting with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which helps identify best practices for naming new human diseases by “avoid offending any type of cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic group offensive, and minimize any negative impact on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare”.
In a statement Friday, the U.N. health agency said it has also renamed two families, or clades, of the virus, using Roman numerals instead of geographic areas, to avoid stigmatization, Fox News reported .
The version of the disease formerly known as the Congo Basin will now be known as Clade 1 or I and the West African clade will be known as Clade two or II.
The WHO said the new names for the clades will take effect immediately while a new name for the disease and virus is being worked on. The WHO said anyone who wants to submit a name suggestion can do so on its website.
The decision comes after a group of scientists proposed an “urgent” name change in June, calling the current name “discriminatory and stigmatizing.”
The new name, they proposed, would minimize the “negative impacts on nations, geographic regions, economies and people and take into account the evolution and spread of the virus.”
Scientists proposed a neutral name that explains the evolution of the virus.
“In the context of the current global outbreak, the continued reference and nomenclature of this African virus is not only inaccurate, but also discriminatory and stigmatizing,” they said in a joint statement. “The most obvious manifestation of this is the use of photos of African patients to depict smallpox lesions in the mainstream media of the Global North.”
The Centers for Disease Control notes that the origin of monkeypox is unknown, although the virus was named in 1958 when two outbreaks of a smallpox-like disease occurred in colonies where they kept monkeys for research.
Before 2022, cases of monkeypox were almost always linked to international travel to countries where the disease is common or via imported animals. The first human case was in 1970.
“What people need to know very clearly is the transmission that we are seeing is happening from human to human,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said on Tuesday.
“It’s close contact transmission. So the concern should be about where it’s being transmitted in the human population and what humans can do to protect themselves from getting it and transmitting it. Certainly not they should not attack any animal.”
This article originally appeared on Fox News and is reproduced with permission