'Not a monkey disease': Why monkeypox may get a new name soon

Health workers screen passengers arriving from abroad for monkeypox symptoms at Anna International Airport terminal in Chennai. – AFP

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced last week that it is "working with partners and experts from around the world on changing the name of monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes."

Monkeypox's clades, which are different branches of the virus' family tree, have been particularly controversial because they are named after African regions.

Last year (2021), the WHO officially named Covid-19 variants after Greek letters to avoid stigmatising the places where they were first detected.

Just days before the WHO announced it would change monkeypox's name, a group of 29 scientists wrote a letter saying there is an "urgent need for a non-discriminatory and non-stigmatising nomenclature" for the virus.

The letter, signed by several prominent African scientists, called for the names of the "West African" and the "Central African" or "Congo Basin" monkeypox clades to be changed.

Until a few months ago, monkeypox had largely been confined to West and Central Africa.

But since May (2022), a new version has spread across much of the world.

The letter's signatories suggested naming this version as a new clade, giving it "the placeholder label hMPXV" – for human monkeypox virus.

Out of the more than 2,100 monkeypox cases recorded globally this year, 84% were in Europe, 12% in the Americas and just three percent in Africa, according to the WHO's latest update last week.