“WHO warns of potential for new pandemic ‘Disease X’ to emerge in the future”

Jakarta –

Now the world is recovering after three years of being hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning the world’s citizens about the potential for a new pandemic to emerge in the future, due to a disease it calls ‘Disease X’.

Scientists estimate that there are 1.67 million viruses yet to be discovered in mammals and birds, and about half of these have the potential to infect humans. However, because the type of disease is unknown, since 2018, WHO has called this disease ‘Disease X’.

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is potential for Disease X occurrences all around us,” said Pranab Chatterjee, a researcher in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, quoted by the National Post, Saturday (27/5/2023).

“The recent series of H5N1 bird flu cases in Cambodia is just one example,” he said further.

President of the EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, emphasized that creativity and vigilance are needed to track and anticipate the next outbreak.

“Nature is producing new viruses all the time. What we’re trying to say (with Disease X) is, let’s think creatively about designing vaccines and therapeutics and drugs that not only affect known agents but can also affect future emerging pandemic pathogens ,” he explained.

There is a possibility that disease X will be zoonotic, that is, caused by transmission from animals to humans. This is because this is also what happens to nearly 75 percent of newly emerging diseases such as ebola, HIV-AIDS, rabies, and of course COVID-19.

Barney Graham, senior adviser for global health equities at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, said the data shows that nearly all infectious diseases of recent global concern, including COVID-19, are caused by animal viruses that transmit to humans. Therefore, he predicts, zoonotic viruses become pathogens that have the potential to become future diseases and become pandemics.

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