New Delhi: The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday (November 28, 2022) announced the renaming of monkeypox to “mpox”, citing concerns that the original name of the disease could be perceived as “racist”. In a statement, the UN health body said that after a series of consultations with global experts, the WHO will begin using a new preferred term “mpox” as a synonym for monkeypox. It said both the names would be used together for a year, while monkeypox would be phased out.
“When the monkeypox outbreak escalated earlier this year, racist and stigmatizing language online, in other settings and in some communities was observed and reported to WHO. In several public and private meetings, many individuals and countries raised concerns expressed and asked WHO to propose a way forward for the name change,” the UN agency said.
WHO held a consultation to gather views from a range of experts as well as countries and the general public, who were invited to submit suggestions for new names, in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) update process was.
Based on these consultations, and further discussions with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the UN body recommended the following:
- Adoption of the new synonym mpox in English for the disease.
- After a transition period of one year, Mpox would become the preferred term in place of monkeypox. This serves to ease concerns raised by experts about the confusion caused by the name change amid the global outbreak. It also allows time to complete the ICD update process and to update WHO publications.
- Synonyms mpox will be included in the online ICD-10 in the coming days. It will be a part of the official 2023 release of ICD-11, the current global standard for health data, clinical documentation and statistical aggregation.
- The term “monkeypox” will continue to be a search term in the ICD to match historical information.
Human monkeypox was given its name in 1970
Human monkeypox was given its name in 1970 after the discovery of the virus that caused the disease in captive monkeys in 1958.
According to the WHO, new disease names should be given with the aim of reducing the unnecessary negative impact of the names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and should not offend any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups. should avoid. ,
It is the responsibility of WHO to assign new, and very exceptionally new, names to existing diseases under the International Classification of Diseases and the WHO Family of International Health Related Classifications (WHO-FIC) through a consultative process that involves WHO member states. . The ICD is part of the WHO family of International Health Classifications (WHO-FIC).
The number of new cases of monkeypox has decreased globally
Meanwhile, the WHO said that the number of new weekly cases of monkeypox has decreased by 5% globally during the week of November 14 to 20, 2022, as compared to the previous week, with over 2.4 million new cases .
The number of new weekly deaths also decreased by 13% compared to the previous week, which recorded nearly 7,800 deaths.
As of 20 November, 634 million confirmed cases and 6.6 million deaths have been recorded globally.