WHO says monkeypox should be renamed ‘immediately’ due to racist ‘historical associations.’

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering new names for the virus that is sweeping the globe after a respected group of scientists called for it to be “urgently” changed.

Concerns about stigma and racism have prompted global health officials to consider renaming monkeypox.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering new names after a respected group of scientists demanded that it be changed “immediately.”

The virus has swept the globe in the last month after previously being classified as endemic in parts of central and western Africa.

However, due to a lack of testing, experts have raised concerns about how widely it has been circulated around the world.

This year, there have been 470 confirmed infections in the UK, compared to just seven prior to 2022.

Last week, 30 international scientists wrote in an open letter that calling the virus “monkeypox” is both discriminatory and inaccurate.

“Like many previous geographic labels of infectious diseases based on locations of first detection, it is misleading and inaccurate because very limited surveillance and diagnostic capacity means that the full range of the pathogen is not known,” they said of the virus’s origin in Africa.

This is exemplified by the discovery in May 2022 that MPXV has been circulating undetected in over 44 countries and is likely to be present in many more.

The letter stated that monkeypox was an infectious disease.