Experts warn that the name may stigmatize the primates from which it is named, but which play a small role in its spread, as well as the African continent with which the animals are often associated. Recently in Brazil, for example, cases of people attacking monkeys due to fear of disease have been reported. “Human monkeypox was named before current best disease naming practices,” WHO spokeswoman Fadella Chaib told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. “We really want to find a name that doesn’t stigmatise,” he added, saying the consultation was now open to everyone via a dedicated website. “It is very important to find a new name for monkeypox because this is the best practice to not cause any offense to an ethnic group, region, country, animal, etc.,” Chaib said. Monkeypox got its name because the virus was first identified in monkeys kept for research in Denmark in 1958, but the disease is found in many animals and more commonly in rodents. The disease was first discovered in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with spread between humans since then mainly confined to some West and Central African countries where it is endemic. But in May, cases of the disease, which causes fever, muscle aches and large boil-like skin lesions, began spreading rapidly around the world, mostly among men who have sex with men. Worldwide, more than 31,000 cases have been confirmed since the start of the year and 12 people have died, according to the WHO, which has declared the outbreak a global health emergency. While the virus can jump from animals to humans, WHO experts insist that the recent global spread is due to close contact transmission between people. Name suggestions range from the technical (OPOXID-22, submitted by Harvard Medical School emergency physician Jeremy Faust) to the farcical (Poxy McPoxface, submitted by Andrew Yi in an allusion to Boaty McBoatface—almost the name of a British polar research vessel after a public vote on the choice). One of the most popular submissions so far is Mpox, submitted by Samuel Miriello, director of a men’s health organization RÉZO, which is already using the name in its outreach campaigns in Montreal, Canada. “When you remove the monkey images, people seem to understand more quickly that there is an emergency that needs to be taken seriously,” he told Reuters news agency. Another suggestion, TRUMP-22, appeared to refer to former US President Donald Trump, who used the controversial term “Chinese virus” for the new coronavirus, although the author said it stood for the “Toxic rash of the unidentified mystery origin of 2022”. The United Nations health agency announced last week that a group of experts it had convened had already agreed on new names for variants of the monkeypox virus. Until now, the two main variants were named after the geographic areas where they were known to circulate, the Congo Basin and West Africa. Experts agreed to rename them using Latin numbers, calling them Clade I and Clade II. A sub-variant of Clade II, now known as Clade IIb, is believed to be the main culprit behind the ongoing global epidemic.
