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The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today a new name that has been chosen to replace monkeypox–mpox.

Image/CDC

Both names will be used simultaneously for one year while “monkeypox” is phased out.

WHO is responsible for assigning names to new and existing diseases.

A number of individuals and countries raised concerns about racist and stigmatizing language online and in other settings earlier this year to the WHO.

WHO recommends the following:

  • Adoption of the new synonym mpox in English for the disease.
  • Mpox will become a preferred term, replacing monkeypox, after a transition period of one year. This serves to mitigate the concerns raised by experts about confusion caused by a name change in the midst of a global outbreak. It also gives time to complete the ICD update process and to update WHO publications.
  • The synonym mpox will be included in the ICD-10 online in the coming days. It will be a part of the official 2023 release of ICD-11, which is the current global standard for health data, clinical documentation and statistical aggregation.
  • The term “monkeypox” will remain a searchable term in ICD, to match historic information.

Human monkeypox was given its name in 1970 (after the virus that causes the disease was discovered in captive monkeys in 1958).

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