New York City public health commissioner Ashwin Vasan in a letter to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus dated Tuesday wrote, "We have a growing concern for the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the 'monkeypox' virus can have on... already vulnerable communities."
Vasan referenced the "painful and racist history within which terminology like (monkeypox) is rooted for communities of color."
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Vasan in his letter also mentioned that the WHO too had also earlier in June floated the idea of changing the name of the virus.
He also pointed to the fact that monkeypox did not actually originate in primates, as the name might suggest, and recalled the negative effects of misinformation during the early days of the HIV epidemic and the racism faced by Asian communities that was exacerbated by former president Donald Trump calling Covid-19 the "China virus."
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"Continuing to use the term 'monkeypox' to describe the current outbreak may reignite these traumatic feelings of racism and stigma -- particularly for Black people and other people of color, as well as members of the LGBTQIA communities, and it is possible that they may avoid engaging in vital health care services because of it," Vasan said.
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On Saturday, WHO declared the spread of the monkeypox virus to be a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). WHO assessed the risk posed to public health by Monkeypox in the European region as high, but at the global level as moderate. This year, there have been over 16,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox in more than 75 countries.
Anyone is susceptible to contracting monkeypox, which has long been endemic in Central and Western Africa, but so far its spread in Europe and the United States has been mostly concentrated among men who have sex with other men.
The first symptoms can include a fever and fatigue, followed a few days later by a rash that can turn into painful, fluid-filled skin lesions, which may last for a few weeks before turning into scabs that then fall off.
No deaths have been reported so far in Europe or the United States.
A limited number of doses of a smallpox vaccine found to protect against monkeypox, called Jynneos, have been administered in New York, mostly to gay and bisexual men.
