JABAR EKSPRES – Head of the Communication and Public Service Bureau of the Indonesian Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi said, that various diseases that are transmitted to humans via air have the opportunity to become disease X or disease X which could trigger a pandemic in the future.
“What is usually a global disease is generally transmitted via air, if through blood, water it can be prevented. But if it is airborne, it is difficult to prevent, because living people cannot stop breathing,” said Siti Nadia Tarmizi who was confirmed in Jakarta on Wednesday.
One disease that has the ability to transmit via air is influenza, just like COVID-19 which triggered a global pandemic.
“Therefore, it is always the flu that has great potential to become a pandemic. We don’t know what the cure is yet, all flu has no cure, and the most difficult to deal with, the most likely to be vaccinated,” she said.
Apart from influenza, Nadia also mentioned several other X-disease candidates categorized as zoonotic or transmitted from animals to humans, such as Ebola, Acute Hepatitis, Monkey Pox, and others.
“Like Ebola, it has been said to be global for several years, but it has not been global until now,” she said.
Disease X is a term adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2018 to create a concise list of disease blueprints that represent hypothetical diseases, which are not yet known, but have the potential to cause pandemics in the future.
WHO has raised the possibility of disease X on Monday (22/5) during the 76th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
Nadia said disease X is caused by unknown pathogens in humans, in the form of viruses, bacteria, or fungi, with no known treatment.
The term X disease has been used by WHO since 2018 for unknown diseases. One year later, COVID-19 emerged as a new pandemic.
