The name change discussions for monkeypox, which some countries and experts find demeaning, started with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week that statements on the subject should be made as soon as possible.
The aim is not only to change the name of the virus, which is already registered in more than 40 countries, but also to change the name of different strains.
Strains are named according to their African region or country where they were first found. For example, the West African strain or the Congo Basin strain (more lethal).
Earlier this month, more than 30 scientists, mostly Africans, published an open letter demanding a naming change “so that it is not discriminatory or stigmatizing.”
According to these scientists, it should simply be called hMPXV (h for human) given that a new version of the virus has been circulating around the world since May.
After a first wave in 10 African countries, 84% of new cases were detected in Europe this year and 12% in the Americas.
About 2,100 cases of smallpox have been detected worldwide since the start of 2022.
To call the disease monkeypox basically means to associate it with African countries, some experts criticize.
“It’s not really a disease that can be attributed to monkeys,” virologist Oyewale Tomori of Redeemer University in Nigeria told AFP.
The disease was discovered in monkeys caged in a laboratory by Danish scientists in the 1950s. But humans caught the virus mainly from rodents.
The African continent has historically been associated with major pandemics.
“We’ve seen this with HIV in the 1980s or the Ebola virus in 2013, and then with Covid and the so-called ‘South African variants’,” epidemiologist Oliver Restif told AFP.
“This is about the wider debate and the stigma of Africa,” he added.
The scientist even criticizes the images that the press uses to show news about the disease.
Often “old photos of African patients”, in reality current cases “much less serious,” he said.
source: Noticias
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