The first time the agency has attempted to rechristen a disease decades after it was first named.
The World Health Organization has renamed monkeypox as mpox, citing concerns the original name of the decades-old animal disease. The renamed comes as discriminatory and racist.
The U.N. health agency said, that mpox was its new preferred name for monkeypox, saying that both monkeypox and mpox would be used for the next year while the old name is phased out.
WHO said it was concerned by the “racist and stigmatizing language” that arose after monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries. It said numerous individuals and countries asked the organization “to propose a way forward to change the name.”
Mpox was first named monkeypox in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a “pox-like” disease, although they are not thought to be the disease’s animal reservoir.
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