The municipality has asked the World Health Organization to rename the disease in order to promote patient care. Nearly 1,100 contaminations have been detected in the city.
Le Monde with AFP
The city of New York asked the World Health Organization (WHO) to rename the variolate of the monkey on Tuesday, July 27, Monkeypox in English, a name deemed stigmatizing and which risks pushing patients to isolate themselves rather than asking for care.
“We are increasingly concerned about the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that messages around the” monkey’s variola “virus can have already vulnerable communities,” writes the health commissioner of the City of New York, Ashwin Vasan, in a letter to the director general of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus. The latter had also mentioned this possible change in mid-June, as Mr. Vasan recalls in his letter.
WHO decreed a public health emergency on international scope (USPPI) against the variolate of the monkey on Saturday. This is the highest level of alert of the institution, which only uses it for the seventh time.
According to the city’s health commissioner, this “terminology” is also anchored in a racist and painful history for colored communities “.
In his mail, he recalls the negative effects of false information when the AIDS (HIV) virus or the racism suffered by Asian communities after the Covid-19 pandemic, that US President Donald Trump, had described as “Chinese virus”.
“traumatic feelings of racism and stigmatization”
“Continuing to use the term” monkey smallpox “to describe the current epidemic can revive these traumatic feelings of racism and stigma – especially for black people and other people of color, as well as For members of the LGBTQIA +communities, and it is possible that they avoid using vital health care services for this reason, “adds Ashwin Vasan.
Everyone can catch the variole of the monkey, but since its appearance in Europe and the United States, the virus spreads in vast majority in men with sex with men.
New York is the most affected city in the United States in number of cases, with 1,092 contaminations detected since the start of the epidemic. More than 15,000 have been confirmed in 74 countries since the start of the year.