Meet mpox; World Health Organization renames monkeypox virus
By Brian Ward
On November 28, The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it would start referring to the monkeypox virus as “mpox,” in an attempt to stymie racist and stigmatizing associations. It’s the WHO’s job to give names to new diseases and to rename existing diseases, though it’s rare for the latter to occur, the organization wrote in a press release.
Mpox was labeled a public health emergency in the U.S. in early August.
“When the outbreak of monkeypox expanded earlier this year, racist and stigmatizing language online, in other settings and in some communities was observed and reported to WHO. In several meetings, public and private, a number of individuals and countries raised concerns and asked WHO to propose a way forward to change the name,” they wrote.
It should be noted that name “monkeypox” was misleading in general, since it can be transferred between any type of mammal and is found more frequently in rodents than in apes and monkeys.
To make the transition smoothly, the WHO has put out the following recommendations:
- “Adoption of the new synonym mpox in English for the disease.
- Mpox will become a preferred term, replacing monkeypox, after a transition period of one year. This serves to mitigate the concerns raised by experts about confusion caused by a name change in the midst of a global outbreak. It also gives time to complete the ICD update process and to update WHO publications.
- The synonym mpox will be included in the ICD-10 online in the coming days. It will be a part of the official 2023 release of ICD-11, which is the current global standard for health data, clinical documentation and statistical aggregation.
- The term ‘monkeypox’ will remain a searchable term in ICD, to match historic information.”
For more on mpox, visit the WHO (https://www.who.int/emergencies/situations/monkeypox-oubreak-2022) and the CDC websites (https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/). And check out our fast facts on mpox article (https://www.accreditationqualitycenter.com/articles/fast-facts-about-monkeypox).
AQCC will be transitioning to “mpox” going forward.