The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world it wasn’t fully prepared for such a large-scale disease sweeping through it. With a considerable loss of life, world leaders are meeting this week during The World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss the potential of a future pandemic that could cause 20 times more fatalities than Covid-19 according to The Independent.
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Internationally dubbed ‘Disease X’ the term was chosen as a placeholder for any potential future outbreak caused by a pathogen not yet known to cause human disease.
Why is the WHO worried about a hypothetical illness?
The World Health Organization has created a list of illnesses that could cause a deadly pandemic such as Covid-19, the Ebola virus, Zika virus, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars).
However, it included the hypothetical Disease X to account for the possibility that new pathogens may emerge. As such it would be prudent to not only focus Research and Development efforts on all the previously mentioned known illnesses but to also work to make 'early cross-cutting R&D preparedness that could be relevant for Disease X'.
The goal is to use already existing vaccines as a base to expedite the creation of a vaccine able to fight off a future pandemic.
‘Preparing for Disease X’
This World Economic Forum session will include a panel led by WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The conversation will feature Brazilian health minister Nisia Trindade Lima, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca’s chair of the board Michel Demaré, Royal Philips CEO Roy Jakobs, and Indian hospital chain Apollo’s executive vice-chairperson Preetha Reddy.
These leading figures in healthcare will discuss the world’s readiness for a potential pandemic and ways to avoid a similar collapse of worldwide healthcare systems to what Covid 19 caused.
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Source:
The Independent: World leaders to meet to discuss threat of hypothetical ‘Disease X’ pandemic in Davos
