Scientists push for monkeypox name change

Discussions about a name change for monkeypox, which some countries and experts consider demeaning, began with the support of the WHO (World Health Organization).

Director General of the organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that announcements on the topic should be made as soon as possible. The statements were made last week.

Earlier this month, more than 30 scientists, most of them Africans, published an open letter in which they demanded that the nomenclature be changed so that it “is not discriminatory or stigmatizing”. According to them, taking into account that since May a new version of the virus has been circulating around the world, it should just be called hMPXV (h, for human) — the monkeypox virus is identified as MPXV.

The aim is not only to change the name of the virus, which has already been registered in more than 40 countries, but also of its different strains. Strains are named after the African regions or countries where they are first located—for example, West African or Congo Basin strain (most lethal).

After an initial wave in ten African countries, 84% of new cases were detected in Europe and 12% in the American continent. In the world, there are almost 2,100 cases of this type of smallpox detected since the beginning of 2022.

Naming the disease as monkeypox implies basically relating it to African countries, criticize some experts.

“It’s not a disease that can really be attributed to monkeys,” said virologist Oyewale Tomori of Redeemer University in Nigeria.

The disease was discovered by Danish scientists in the 1950s in monkeys caged in a laboratory. But humans contracted the virus mainly from rodents.

The African continent has historically been associated with major pandemics.

“We saw this with HIV in the 1980s or the Ebola virus in 2013, and then with Covid and the supposed ‘South African variants,'” said epidemiologist Oliver Restif. “This is a broader debate and is related to the stigmatization of Africa,” he added.

The scientist even criticizes images used by the press to illustrate news about the disease, often “old photographs of African patients”, when in reality the current cases “are much less serious”, he concluded.