United States: The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a long thirty pathogens list likely to pose a risk of the next pandemic.
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According to experts, H5N1 bird flu is the most dangerous virus and bacteria currently prevalent in the US, and scientists fear that it might also infect humans.
Another fear is about mosquito-borne Dengue, also called the ‘bone-breaking disease,’ which is spreading across the US at an unprecedented scale, as the Daily Mail reported.
Another comes on the list is monkeypox, which caused a global epidemic in 2022 and has deadly tendencies, and currently, a more lethal strain is making rounds in Africa.
More than fifty percent of the list entries were similar to those released in 2017 when it was published for the first time.
Other diseases include the Hantavirus (spread among rodents), the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus, flu, and Covid. The scientists also added smallpox, which was eradicated, but fear remains that it could be released from lab accidents. Then, it quickly spread, as only a few people now possess immunity against the virus.
There is another disease– rodent-borne Lassa fever, which may pose the risk of bleeding from the eyes and nose and even cause patients to have seizures, as the Daily Mail reported.
How did the organization compile the list?
Two hundred scientists from more than five hundred countries compiled the list, reviewing and shortlisting 1,600 bacteria and viruses.
Before that, the lists were compiled in 2017 and 2018 and included around a dozen pathogens. Now, researchers have an expanded form of the list, in which the disease is more likely to spread from animals to humans and between areas of the world.
According to scientists, urbanization and deforestation pumped contact between wildlife and humans. More international travel also generates more novel opportunities for diseases to find ways to travel to new areas of the world.
According to Dr. Ana Maria Henao Restrepo in Nature magazine, ‘The prioritization process helps identify critical knowledge gaps that need to be addressed urgently.’