The WHO has declared monkeypox a global medical emergency.
New York:
New York City asked the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday to rename the monkeypox virus to avoid stigmatizing patients who might then be deterred from seeking help.
New York has seen more cases of the disease, which the WHO declared a global emergency over the weekend, than any other city in the United States, with 1,092 infections detected so far.
“We have growing concern about the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that messaging around the monkeypox virus can have on … already vulnerable communities,” New York Public Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said in a letter to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Gebreyesus from Tuesday.
The WHO floated the idea of changing the name of the virus, which is related to the eradicated smallpox virus, during a press conference last month, a proposal Vasan mentioned in his letter.
Vasan mentioned the “painful and racist history in which terminology like (monkey pox) has taken root for communities of color.”
He pointed to the fact that monkeypox does not actually originate from primates, as the name might suggest, and recalled the negative effects of misinformation in the early days of the HIV epidemic and racism faced by Asian communities, which was exacerbated by former President Donald Trump calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus”.
“Continuing to use the term ‘monkey pox’ to describe the current epidemic could reignite these traumatic feelings of racism and stigma – particularly for black and other people of color, as well as members of LGBTQIA+ communities, and it is possible that they may to avoid participating in vital health services because of it,” Vasan said.
Everyone is susceptible to contracting 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.
The first symptoms may include fever and fatigue, followed a few days later by a rash that can develop into painful, fluid-filled skin lesions that can last for several weeks before turning into scabs that then fall off .
So far, no deaths have been reported in Europe or the United States.
More than 16,000 confirmed cases have been reported 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 administered in New York, mostly to gay and bisexual men.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated channel.)
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