WHO officially renames monkey pox under pressure from Biden administration

The World Health Organization, or WHO, will begin officially using the term “mpox” instead of “monkeypox” after the Biden Administration pressured the international organization to change the name due to associated racial connotations .

On the international organization’s website, it says the two names will be used simultaneously for a year until the “monkey pox” is phased out.

Shown in this illustration are test tubes labeled “Monkeypox virus positive and negative” on May 23, 2022.
(REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)

“As the monkeypox outbreak expanded earlier this year, racist and stigmatizing language was observed and reported to WHO online, in other settings and in some communities,” the organization said in a press release “In various meetings, public and private, a number of people and countries expressed concerns and asked the WHO to propose a way forward to change the name.”

WHO DECLARES MONKEYPOX STILL A GLOBAL HEALTH EMERGENCY

The WHO is tasked with assigning names to diseases, whether new or existing. Through consultation with experts, countries and the public, WHO recommended that mpox be adopted as the new English term for the disease, become the preferred term after one year, and that “monkeypox” remain as search term for the story. information

Last week, the WHO announced it was to change the name of “monkeypox” to “mpox” after senior Biden officials urged the WHO to make the change. The administration even threatened to adopt new terminology without WHO approval.

According to the report, the Biden administration believed that the name “monkeypox” carries an unnecessary stigma for people of color.

TUSTIN, CA – August 16: Families Together of Orange County held a monkeypox vaccine clinic in Tustin, CA on Tuesday, August 16, 2022. The Jynneos vaccine consists of two doses given 28 days apart difference
((Photo by Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images))

Following the WHO’s announcement of the name change on Monday, the Biden Harris administration announced its support for the change.

WHO TO CHANGE NAME FROM “MONKEYPOX” TO “MPOX” AT BIDEN ADMIN’S REQUEST

“We welcome the change from the World Health Organization,” US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “We must do everything we can to break down barriers to public health and reducing the stigma associated with the disease is a critical step in our work to end smallpox.”

In the same statement, the administration said that human smallpox was first named in 1970, before the WHO published its best practices for naming diseases in 2015.

Best practices for naming new diseases should “minimize the unnecessary negative impact of names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid offending any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic group” .

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The monkeypox outbreak is a global health emergency and has been given the highest alert level by the WHO.

The United States has seen 29,200 cases of monkeypox within its borders.