Say no more “monkey pox” (“monkeypox” in OV). This is essentially what the city of New York is asking for, which on Tuesday 26 July asked the World Health Organization (WHO) to rename this disease, whose name it considers stigmatizing. “We are increasingly concerned about the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that messages about the “monkeypox” virus can have on (an) already vulnerable community.“The health commissioner of the city on the east coast of the United States, Ashwin Vasan, is concerned in a letter to the director general of WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In his letter, the city official recalls the negative effects of false information during the emergence of the AIDS virus (HIV) or of the racism suffered by Asian communities with the Covid-19 pandemicwhich US President Donald Trump called “chinese virus».
Ashwin Vasan especially argues that the “terminology“of the monkey is”rooted in a history of racism and hurt for communities of color». «Continuing to use the term “monkeypox” to describe the current outbreak may rekindle those traumatic feelings of racism and stigma, especially for people of color and other people of color, as well as members of LGBTQIA+ communities.” he writes. The risk, according to him: that of the people concerned “avoid using life-saving health services for this reason».
Anyone can get monkeypox, which is transmitted during direct or indirect physical contact (especially with the sheets). But, since its emergence in Europe and the United States, the virus has overwhelmingly spread among men who engage in same-sex relationships. Hence the fear of a resurgence of homophobia. In New York, the hardest-hit city in the United States by number of cases, the disease has spread rapidly: 1,092 infections have been detected since the beginning of the epidemic.