The Geneva-based World Health Organisation(WHO) has given a new name to the disease, Covid-19, which was announced late on Tuesday Feb 11,2020
WHO said it had given a new name to the illness that has triggered an
international public health emergency, infecting nearly 400 more people
in 24 countries.
The name “COVID-19” does not make any reference to a place or animal to avoid stigmatisation.
“We
had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an
animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also
pronounceable and related to the disease,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus said while announcing it
What considerations does the WHO take into account while naming new human infectious diseases?
The WHO, in consultation and collaboration with the World
Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture
Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), has identified the best
practices for naming new human diseases, “with the aim to minimize
unnecessary negative impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism
or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social,
national, regional, professional or ethnic groups”
These best practices apply to those new diseases that can be
classified as an infection, syndrome, or disease of humans; a disease
that has never been recognised before in humans; has potential health
impact and in those cases where no disease name is established in common
usage
Significantly, as per the WHO, the assigning of an “appropriate”
disease name is necessary by those who first report a new human disease,
especially given the rapid and global communication through social
media and other electronic means. In case an inappropriate name has
started circulating, the WHO may assign an interim name and recommend
its use
Furthermore, names that are assigned by the WHO may or may not be
approved by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) at a
later stage. The ICD, which is also managed by the WHO, provides a final
standard name for each human disease according to standard guidelines
that are aimed at reducing the negative impact from names while
balancing science, communication and policy.
What are WHO’s best practices for disease naming?
The best practices include using generic descriptive terms such as
respiratory diseases, hepatitis, neurologic syndrome, watery diarrhoea
and using specific descriptive terms that may indicate the age group of
the patients and the time course of the disease, such as progressive,
juvenile or severe.
Further, in case the causative pathogen is known, it should be used
as part of the disease name with additional descriptors such as the year
when the disease was first reported or detected. For example, novel
coronavirus respiratory syndrome. The names should also be short
(rabies, malaria, polio) and should be consistent with the guidelines
under the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) Content Model
Reference Guide
Additionally, the best practices also include advice on what the
disease names should not include, such as the geographic location where
it was first reported. For example, the Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome, Spanish Flu, Japanese encephalitis and Lyme disease. Disease
names should also not include people’s names (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,
Chagas disease), the species or class of animal or food (swine flu,
monkeypox etc.), cultural or occupational references (miners, butchers,
cooks, nurses etc.) and terms that incite “undue fear” such as death,
fatal and epidemic
