HEALTH: The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that it received over 100,000 signals every month.
“Any of these signals could be a real health threat, an outbreak or even a pandemic,” it explained.
“What we call signals,” it said. Are really anything unusual happening in the public health around the world.”
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Assistant Director-General for Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, 54, in Episode #132​ / January 10, 2025 / From alerts to action of Science WHO’s TV program spoke in detail What are these health signals or threats.
For instance, he said there are more people that usual in a local hospital, people who have disease which they don’t expect young people to have or different demographics in any society to have.
“We hear more people are dying in parts of the world. There is a flood, war or conflict and people are dying,” from the official website Dr Ihekweazu stated.
How Do Scientists And WHO Decide?
So how do scientists and WHO, together decide which one of these signals could be potential outbreak or disease?
The Assistant Director-General for Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems, said. “We have a system in every country through which a lot of this works is being done.”
This system includes, Automated scans through all the media sources. Using Artificial intelligence (AI) to sieve out the noise, Verification which often mean that we are calling colleagues in the affected community.
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“Sometimes, we arrange for a sample to be taken from a group of people and sent to a laboratory to confirm what disease is happening.
Chikwe Ihekweazu is a Nigerian epidemiologist and public health physician.