The World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised the alarm for a new lethal pathogen.
Time to panic? Not really. You see, the disease doesn’t actually exist yet …
The WHO is a Geneva-based organisation that closely monitors world health standards, listing diseases that pose significant threats beyond domestic borders. Since 2015, the WHO has created an annual list of 10 diseases that pose the most significant threat to humankind.
The list was developed in response to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, which exposed our inability to deal with such threats.
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In February, WHO released its 2018 list of priority diseases that currently cannot be prevented by vaccination or cured. Disease X stands for the unknown there. https://t.co/o3wg5Q0I8e pic.twitter.com/mSM3dTrgmq
— WHO (@WHO) March 16, 2018
WHO committee member, John-Arne Rottingen, recently stated that the next big outbreak will be something we’ve never seen before. It’s a reason why emergency measures are already being put in place. These measures include the development of “platform technologies” and so-called “recipes” that can be developed in advance that can later be customised to suit the specific characteristics of a disease.
Before we start boarding-up windows and planning the apocalypse, it’s important to note that Disease X is still only operating as a concept. It could emerge as a mutation of a disease or something else entirely. Advances in stem cell and gene research have been posed as potential problems, but the list extends to nuclear and terror attacks, along with our day-to-day interactions with animals, (a problem that’s seen diseases such as bird flu flourish in the past).
Disease X – not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’.
Now, where the fuck is ACA’s big red panic button?
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