New York: New York City asked the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday to rename the monkeypox virus to avoid stigmatizing patients who may then delay seeking care. New York has seen more cases of the disease, which the WHO declared a global health emergency over the weekend, than any other city in the United States, with 1,092 infections identified so far. “We have a growing concern about the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that messaging around the ‘monkey pox’ virus can have on … already vulnerable communities,” New York City Public Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said in a letter to WHO head Tedros Adhanom. Ghebreyesus dated Tuesday. The WHO had floated the idea to change the name of the virus, which is related to the eliminated smallpox virus, during a press conference last month, a suggestion Vasan mentioned in his letter. Vasan referred to the “painful and racist history in which terminology like monkey pox is rooted for communities of color.” He pointed to the fact that monkeypox did not actually come from primates, as the name suggests, and recalled the negative effects of misinformation in the early days of the HIV epidemic and the racism faced by Asian communities that was exacerbated by former President Donald Trump calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus”. “Continuing to use the term ‘monkey pox’ to describe the current outbreak may rekindle these traumatic feelings of racism and stigma — particularly for black and other people of color, as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ communities, and is likely to may avoid attending vital healthcare services because of this,” said Vasan. Anyone can get monkeypox, which has long been endemic in Central and West Africa, but so far its spread in Europe and the United States has been concentrated mostly among men who have sex with men. Early symptoms may include fever and fatigue, followed a few days later by a rash that may turn into painful, fluid-filled skin lesions that may last for a few weeks before turning into scabs that then fall off. No deaths have been reported so far in Europe or the United States. More than 16,000 confirmed cases have been recorded in 75 countries so far this year, the WHO said on Monday. A limited number of doses of a smallpox vaccine found to protect against monkeypox, called Jynneos, have been given in New York, mostly to gay and bisexual men. (Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published by a syndicated feed.)
