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The WHO wants to give monkeypox a new name

NPR – Monkeypox is poised to get a new name, the World Health Organization says, after scientists recently criticized the current name as “discriminatory and stigmatizing.”

The researchers say it’s also inaccurate to name versions of the virus after parts of Africa.

The WHO is working with experts “on changing the name of monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing on the outbreak on Tuesday.

“It’s called monkeypox because it was first isolated from a monkey in Africa.” – Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, May 23, 2022 

Tedros is also calling an emergency meeting next week to discuss the virus, which he says is not behaving the way it has in the past.

Experts are calling for the change

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A group of 29 biologists and other researchers issued a public call for a new nomenclature around monkeypox last week on the virological.org website. They said the current international outbreak “has been detected without a clear link to Africa.”

Have an idea for a new name for monkeypox? Post in the comments area below (civil discussion only)

Despite “growing evidence that the most likely scenario is that cross-continent, cryptic human transmission has been ongoing for longer than previously thought,” the scientists said, a public narrative persists in suggesting the current outbreak is linked to Africa, West Africa or Nigeria. That builds on an existing stigma, they said.

“The most obvious manifestation of this is the use of photos of African patients to depict the pox lesions in mainstream media in the global north,” the researchers said … READ MORE.

Rash on the hand of Kevin Kwong
(KEVIN KWONG)

People of any race can get monkeypox, by not masturbating correctly, for example. 

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