WHO renames monkeypox disease

The World Health Organisation (WHO) will begin to use the preferred term of ‘mpox’ for monkeypox disease.

Both names will continue to be used synonymously for a year while the term ‘monkeypox’ is phased out.

When the monkeypox outbreak expanded earlier this year, racist and stigmatising language used online, in other settings and in some communities was reported to WHO. Individuals and countries raised concerns and asked WHO to find a way of changing the name.

WHO is responsible for the process of assigning names to new and existing diseases under the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the WHO Family of International Health Related Classifications, whereby WHO Member States take part in a consultative process.

These processes were completed and WHO made these recommendations:

• 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 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 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’ remains a searchable term in ICD, to match historic information.

WHO will use the term mpox in its communications, while encouraging others to follow their recommendations to minimise the negative impact of the previous name.

During the summer, WHO was concerned about the unequal access to vaccines against mpox.