The World Health Organization is calling on countries to join its pandemic treaty – and warning that the next outbreak could be caused by a disease 20 times deadlier than Covid.
The agency's general director, Dr. Tedors Ghebreyesus said today that they are already at risk of missing the deal's May deadline – which could be a major blow to future generations.
During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), Dr. Ghebreyesus last week called for increased cooperation between countries to suppress outbreaks before they spread worldwide.
He said it was “a question of when, not if” an even deadlier pandemic would strike, underscoring how unprepared the world is for Covid.
The WHO is currently preparing for Disease X, a hypothetical pathogen that could trigger the next major outbreak – and is considered as dangerous as Ebola, SARS or the Zika virus.
In 2018, WHO identified nine priority diseases (listed) that pose the greatest risk to public health. They were considered the highest risk due to lack of treatment or their ability to cause a pandemic
The new pact and a series of updates to existing rules for dealing with pandemics are intended to strengthen global defenses against new pathogens after the Covid pandemic killed more than seven million people, according to the WHO.
“I am concerned that Member States may not honor this commitment and there are still several outstanding issues that still need to be resolved,” said Dr. Ghebreyesus.
“In my view, failure to comply with the pandemic agreement and the changes to the IHR (International Health Regulations) will be a missed opportunity that future generations may not forgive us.”
Only once before in the organization's 75-year history has the WHO succeeded in agreeing such an agreement, a tobacco control agreement in 2003.
The Tready was first proposed in 2021 and negotiations on the draft began in October 2022.
But experts say it could take up to seven years to reach an agreement, pointing out that only two years have passed so far.
Roland Driece, co-chair of the group negotiating the deal, added that the “declining urgency” of pandemic prevention made it crucial to make progress now.
Dr. Ghebreyesus added at the Davos summit: “There are things.” [diseases] that are unknown, that can happen – and everything that happens is a question of when, not if.
“So we need a placeholder for that, for the diseases that we don't know could occur, and then we gave the name Disease X.”
“So Disease X is a placeholder for an unknown disease.”
He added: “Of course there are some people who say that.” [Disease X] can cause panic.
'NO. It is actually better to anticipate something that might happen, because it has happened many times in our history, and prepare for it.
“We shouldn't face things unprepared. We can also prepare for some unknown things because there are basic things you can do.”
The WHO treaty – also called the Pandemic Preparedness Treaty – is an agreement that allows countries to share warnings, data and research with each other.
This would help quickly alert the world to an emerging disease threat, the agency argues, and also speed up the development and rollout of vaccines.
The draft contract was first proposed in 2021 and the draft should be ready by October 2023.
Member states are currently negotiating the text of the agreement before a further version is made available in May this year – at which point it could potentially be signed.
WHO's other efforts include setting up an early warning center in Berlin in 2021 where researchers will watch for future outbreaks.
And an mRNA vaccine center in South Africa that opened in April last year, designed to quickly provide vaccines to poorer countries.
In a session titled “Preparing for Illness
previously spoke to three virus experts who agreed that a respiratory virus would most likely trigger the next fast-spreading disease that leads to a global shutdown
The WHO has been accused of failing to act quickly in the face of the emergence of Covid, but of appearing to parrot statements from Beijing, including that the virus does not appear to have spread between people.
There have also been problems with access to vaccines, with many poorer countries struggling to get shots because they have been squeezed out by richer countries.
In 2018, illness
Dr. Ghebreyesus spoke at a lecture accompanied by other leaders titled “Novel Efforts Needed to Prepare Health Systems for the Multiple Challenges Ahead,” accompanied by other virus experts.
Experts don't yet know what type of virus will cause the next pandemic and be the next Disease X, but scientists have been warning for decades that bird flu is the most likely contender.
Researchers say this is due to the risk of recombination – as high flu rates in humans increase the risk that a human will also be co-infected with bird flu.
Others have long speculated that illness
Some have even warned that Disease
Dr. Ghebreyesus also warned that many people lost their lives in the Covid outbreak because countries were not prepared.
He said: “We lost a lot of people because we couldn’t manage them.” [in the early days of Covid].
“They could have been saved, but there wasn’t enough space.”
previously spoke to three virus experts who agreed that a respiratory virus – spread through droplets from coughs and sneezes – is most likely to trigger the next fast-spreading disease that leads to a global shutdown.
They said that the infamous disease is the Covid pandemic.
It is also possible, they warned, that the outbreak could be even worse than the Covid pandemic, pointing to the 1918 flu outbreak that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, compared to the seven million deaths from Covid.
The experts speculated that the main culprits of the next pandemic would be another coronavirus and bird flu – a virus that infects birds but could potentially jump to humans.