on June 25, 2022 at 5:05 p.m.
June 25, 2022 at 5:00 PM
Extended to around forty countries, monkeypox is about to change its name. The World Health Organization considers it to be misleading and discriminatory.
The monkey pox epidemic has indeed taken hold in France. Friday June 3, 2022, Santé Publique France identified 51 confirmed cases. Whether the typical patient profile has been identified and that we know more about this epidemic, it could soon change its name. The World Health Organization considers it to be misleading and discriminatory. As WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted a week earlier, the WHO is considering changing the name of the virus and should do “announcements as soon as possible” on this point. A few weeks earlier, about thirty scientists, the majority of whom are African, wrote a forum to ask to change this name, in order to implement “a nomenclature that is neither discriminatory nor stigmatizing.“
Monkeypox is transmitted by rodents
Long limited to African countries, 84% of new cases of monkeypox were detected in Europe this year and 12% on the American continent. Today, this new strain has been shown to be transmitted more easily from human to human. In Africa, it had been observed that the people affected by this epidemic had been contaminated by an animal. For’AFPvirologist Oyewale Tomori insisted: “It’s not really a disease related to monkeys.“And for good reason, monkeypox is mainly transmitted by rodents. However, in the 1950s, Danish researchers discovered it in laboratory monkeys.
The image conveyed by the media in question
On the site The Conversationresearcher Moses John Bockarie recalled: “Monkeys are generally associated with southern countries, especially Africa.” While Africa has been targeted as the source of many diseases, fear of stigma is high. For’AFPepidemiologist Oliver Restif said: “We especially saw this with AIDS in the 1980s, Ebola during the 2013 epidemic, then with Covid and the supposed ‘South African variants.’“Evoking the images of illustrations that the media use, this one regretted that it was put forward “old photographs of African patients“whereas current cases would be less severe.