On Nov. 28, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that monkeypox has been renamed "mpox."
According to a press release from the organization, "both names will be used simultaneously for one year while 'monkeypox' is phased out.
"When the outbreak of monkeypox expanded earlier this year, racist and stigmatizing language online, in other settings and in some communities was observed and reported to WHO. In several meetings, public and private, a number of individuals and countries raised concerns and asked WHO to propose a way forward to change the name."
Among other things, mpox will be included in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 online in the next few 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.
Human monkeypox was given its name in 1970 (after the virus that causes the disease was discovered in captive monkeys in 1958), before the publication of WHO best practices in naming diseases, published in 2015.