The World Health Organization (WHO) has added a so-called Disease X to its list of maladies that could potentially harm humanity and result to an epidemic of global proportions, despite the fact scientists are yet to discover it.
The unknown disease could be as detrimental as some diseases that spread terror across the world centuries ago, before modern medicine techniques appeared and fought diseases that were thought to be incurable.
WHO on its website said “Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”
This mysterious malady that doesn’t exist yet is supposed to be a “known unknown,” meaning that it is something that could come out of a biological mutation in the future, WHO added in the statement.
Now that WHO has added Disease X to the list, the mysterious and potentially world-wide dangerous virus accompanies the Ebola virus, Respiratory Syndrome (SARS,) Zika virus and Rift Valley Fever, following an annual review by WHO.
It’s still unclear how this disease could spread and cause an epidemic or even come into existence. However, WHO suggests that it could be the result of biological warfare or if a virus similar to the “Spanish flu” spread across the world suddenly.
The Spanish flu spread across large parts of the globe. It is believed to have killed at least 40 million people between 1918 and 1919.
However, this is not the only disease that may potentially pose danger in the future.
The organization put arenaviral hemorrhagic fevers, Chikungunya- a disease which spreads to humans by infected mosquitoes, and highly pathogenic coronaviral diseases into consideration.
“These diseases pose major public health risks and further research and development is needed, including surveillance and diagnostics.” “They should be watched carefully and considered again at the next annual review,” WHO said.
WHO’s Research and Development (R&D) Blueprint list has an objective to find and sequence diseases which could turn out to carry health risks to humanity globally, as those diseases have a potential for spreading an epidemic.
Moreover, at the moment, for those diseases there are no countermeasures which could sufficiently contribute to people fending off the diseases.
