PATHOGENSWHO Updates List of Most Dangerous Viruses and Bacteria
The WHO recently published a report outlining the findings of its global pathogen prioritization process that involved more than 200 scientists who evaluated evidence related to 28 viral families and one core group of bacteria, covering 1,652 pathogens.
The WHO recently published a report outlining the findings of its global pathogen prioritization process that involved more than 200 scientists who evaluated evidence related to 28 viral families and one core group of bacteria, covering 1,652 pathogens.
Pandora Report writes:
This updated priority pathogens list has grown to more than 30 pathogens, now including influenza A virus, monkeypox virus, and dengue virus. The pathogens were selected due to their potential to cause a global public health emergency in humans. According to the WHO report, the process emphasized “the imperative nature of collaborative efforts to attain global resilience against epidemics and pandemics.”
Furthermore, “…the approach used advocates for a scientific framework to enhance preparedness for forthcoming outbreaks, Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs), and pandemics by focusing on research of Viral and Bacterial Families, rather than isolated pathogens deemed to present global risks.”
Previous efforts by WHO in 2017 and 2018 identified about a dozen priority pathogens, but it is important to frequently revisit and revise these lists to account for “major global changes in climate change, deforestation, urbanization, international travel, and more,” Neelika Malavige, an immunologist at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Colombo, Sri Lanka told Nature.
Furthermore, as Smriti Mallapaty explains in the same Nature news article, the researchers involved with this process also created a list of “prototype pathogens,” “which could act as model species for basic-science studies and the development of therapies and vaccines.” The goal of these is to help encourage more research into under- and less-studied pathogens. Mallapaty writes, “For example, before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were no available human vaccines for any of the coronaviruses, says Malik Peiris, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, who was part of the Coronaviridae research group. Developing vaccines for one member of the family will bring confidence to the scientific community that it is better placed to address a major public-health emergency for those viruses, he says. This applies to treatments, too, he says, because “many antivirals work across a whole group of viruses”.’
This article is published courtesy of the Pandora Report.
