The World Health Organization on Tuesday asked people for help to suggest new names for monkeypox to ease the stigma attached to the current name for the rapidly spreading disease.
For weeks, the United Nations expressed its concern regarding the name of the disease that appeared on the world stage last May.
Experts warn that the current name may constitute a stigma, on the one hand, for the monkeys that play a small role in its spread, and for the continent of Africa, on the other hand, to which these animals are often associated.
In Brazil, for example, there have recently been cases of people attacking monkeys, once morest the background of fear of disease.
“Monkeypox was given its name long ago,” WHO spokeswoman Fadila Shoaib told reporters in Geneva.
She added, “We really want to find a name that does not have a stigma,” noting that the field is open to everyone to participate in changing the name, through a website affiliated with the World Health Organization, which is:
https://icd.who.int/dev11
The term chickenpox was used when this virus was detected in 1958 in monkeys in a laboratory in Denmark, but it was also discovered in other types of animals, especially rodents. The first human infection was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
But in May, the disease began to spread rapidly around the world, especially among gays. The disease causes fever and muscle aches.
More than 31,000 confirmed infections have been recorded in the world since the beginning of 2022, and 12 infected people have died, according to the World Health Organization, which announced on July 23 the highest level of alert, which is a public health emergency at an international level, to strengthen the fight once morest the disease.
While the virus can be transmitted from animals to humans, WHO experts stress that its recent spread is caused by physical contact between humans.
And the organization announced last week that a group of experts met and agreed to adopt new names for the monkeypox virus mutants.
