New York has recorded an increasing number of monkeypox cases in recent days with the latest number at 1,092 cases. This has prompted calls for the disease to be renamed due to the stigma and potential backlash attached to the name.
“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 the World Health Organization.
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The WHO previously said that it is planning to change the name of the new disease that recently got declared as a ‘public health emergency’.
“There is painful and racist history within which terminology like monkeypox is rooted for communities of color,” Varsan said.
The New York official said that the virus did not actually originate in primates, as the name might suggest, and recalled the negative effects of misinformation during the early days of the HIV epidemic and the racism faced by Asian communities.
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“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,” Varsan added.
The virus was previously endemic in Western Africa but has now spread in many parts of Europe and the world.
