The World Health Organization has released guidelines on the best practices for naming new infectious diseases in humans.
WHO is asking scientists, national authorities, and the media to follow these practices to protect national economies and people suffering from the diseases.
"In recent years, several new human infectious diseases have emerged. The use of names such as 'swine flu' and 'Middle East Respiratory Syndrome' has had unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing certain communities or economic sectors," said Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General for Health Security, WHO. "This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected. We've seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals. This can have serious consequences for peoples' lives and livelihoods."
Common names for dangerous diseases often get their start outside of the scientific community and are then widely used by media outlets and across the internet, making them difficult to change. WHO stressed the importance of appropriate disease names being chosen by whoever first reports on a new infection.
The guidelines say a disease name should be based on a generic descriptive term or be associated with the symptoms. If more information is available on how the disease manifests, descriptive names can be used if appropriate.
Terms to be avoided are: "geographic locations (e.g. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Spanish Flu, Rift Valley fever), people's names (e.g. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Chagas disease), species of animal or food (e.g. swine flu, bird flu, monkey pox), cultural, population, industry or occupational references (e.g. legionnaires), and terms that incite undue fear (e.g. unknown, fatal, epidemic)," WHO reported.
