WHO Renames Monkeypox As ‘Mpox’. Find Out Why

WHO said numerous individuals and countries asked the organization “to propose a way forward to change the name.”

India has reported nine cases of monkeypox; five from Kerala and four, including a 31-year-old woman from Nigeria who tested positive on Wednesday, from Delhi. — San Francisco is the first major US city to declare Monkeypox local emergency.

London: After much speculation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has renamed monkeypox as ‘mpox’, citing concerns over deepening stigmatisation. WHO said that the original name of the decades-old animal disease could be construed as discriminatory and racist and hence, mpox was its new preferred name for monkeypox, saying that both monkeypox and mpox would be used for the next year while the old name is phased out.

WHO said it was concerned by the “racist and stigmatizing language” that arose after monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries. It said numerous individuals and countries asked the organization “to propose a way forward to change the name.”

In August, WHO began consulting experts about renaming the disease, shortly after the U.N. agency declared monkeypox’s spread to be a global emergency.

To date, there have been more than 80,000 cases identified in dozens of countries that had not previously reported the smallpox-related disease. Until May, monkeypox, a disease that is thought to originate in animals, was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond central and west Africa.

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Mpox was first named monkeypox in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a “pox-like” disease, although they are not thought to be the disease’s animal reservoir.

Although WHO has named numerous new diseases shortly after they emerged, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS and COVID-19, this appears to be the first time the agency has attempted to rechristen a disease decades after it was first named.