In an effort to avoid stigmatizing patients who could therefore delay seeking care, New York City requested that the World Health Organization (WHO) rename the monkeypox virus on Tuesday.
With 1,092 infections discovered so far, New York has more cases of the illness than any other American metropolis. The WHO has declared the sickness a worldwide health emergency.
“We have a growing concern for the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the ‘monkeypox’ virus can have on… already vulnerable communities,” New York City public health commissioner Ashwin Vasan said in a letter to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus dated Tuesday.
Vasan said in his letter that the WHO had suggested changing the name of the virus, which is connected to the smallpox virus that has been eradicated, during a press conference last month.
The “traumatic and discriminatory history within which language like (monkeypox) is anchored for communities of color,” according to Vasan, was brought up.
He emphasized that, contrary to what the name might imply, monkeypox did not actually first appear in primates, and he recalled the negative effects of misinformation during the early stages of the HIV epidemic as well as the racism that Asian communities had to deal with as a result of the former president Donald Trump referring to Covid-19 as the “China virus.”
“Continuing to use the term ‘monkeypox’ to describe the current outbreak may reignite these traumatic feelings of racism and stigma — particularly for Black people and other people of color, as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ communities, and it is possible that they may avoid engaging in vital health care services because of it,” Vasan said.
Monkeypox, which has long been endemic in Central and Western Africa, can affect anyone, but its expansion in Europe and the US has so far primarily affected men who have intercourse with other men.
Fever and exhaustion are often the initial signs, which may be followed a few days later by a rash that may develop into painful, fluid-filled skin lesions that may linger for a few weeks before becoming scabs that eventually peel off.
In either Europe or the US, no fatalities have been reported to date.
The WHO reported on Monday that more than 16,000 confirmed cases had been reported in 75 countries so far this year.
Jynneos, a smallpox vaccination that has been shown to protect against monkeypox, has been given in a small number of doses in New York, largely to gay and bisexual males.
