![The WHO is warning doctors and scientists to do more to prepare for the next pandemic to sweep the world (Image: Moment RF)](https://i0.wp.com/gagrule.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Disease-X.jpg?resize=740%2C400)
The WHO is warning doctors and scientists to do more to prepare for the next pandemic to sweep the world (Image: Moment RF)
The World Health Organisation has added the unknown future pathogen to a list of deadly threats to mankind.
An unknown and deadly new illness dubbed Disease X has been added to the list of potential global epidemics that could potentially kills millions.
Each year scientists with the World Health Organisation (WHO) create a list of the most likely diseases to break out into a worldwide pandemic.
This year, among the familiar Ebola, SARS, and Zika viruses is the new name of Disease X.
And unlike the other pathogens, it is not known what causes Disease X or how doctors could try to treat it.
Researchers said that they added Disease X to the threat list to recognise the fact that the next deadly pandemic could be started by an illness that has not caused any problems before.
“Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”
Norwegian scientist and WHO adviser John-Arne Rottingen said that it was likely the next outbreak would be “something we have not seen before”.
“It may seem strange to be adding an ‘X’ but the point is to make sure we prepare and plan flexibly in terms of vaccines and diagnostic tests,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
Disease X could even be man-made, rather than a fluke of nature. There are growing fears that the use and development of chemical and biological weapons are on the rise. In Syria’s bloody civil war chemical bombs have been dropped on civilians on numerous occasions.
And closer to home, the police have confirmed that a nerve agent, probably created in a lab by state-sponsored scientists as a targeted weapon, was used to attack the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury this week.
Last year North Korea is believed to have used the nerve agent VX to assassinate the half-brother of dictator Kim Jong-Un in an airport in a Malaysian airport.
Mr Rottingen said that the man-made viruses and diseases were especially dangerous because humans have not built up any resistance over time to them, leaving them free to sweep across the globe before governments and doctors can catch up.