Prioritizing diseases for research and development in emergency contexts

For the purposes of the R&D Blueprint, WHO has developed a special tool for determining which diseases and pathogens to prioritize for research and development in public health emergency contexts. This tool seeks to identify those diseases that pose a public health risk because of their epidemic potential and for which there are no, or insufficient, countermeasures. The diseases identified through this process are the focus of the work of R& D Blueprint.

The first list of prioritized diseases was released in December 2015. Using a published prioritization methodology  (2016), the list was first reviewed in January 2017 and a second time in 2018. An updated methodology and a new list are anticipated before the end of 2019. The Blueprint list of priority diseases is not an exhaustive list, nor does it indicate the most likely causes of the next epidemic:

• Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF)

• Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease

• Lassa fever

• Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)

• Nipah and henipaviral diseases

• Rift Valley fever (RVF)

• Zika

• Disease X (Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease, and so the R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown “Disease X” as far as possible)