iStock/Thinkstock(LONDON) — A number of governments and charities have committed $460 million to fastrack vaccines to fight Mers, Lassa fever, and the Nipah virus according to BBC News. Scientists say the three relatively little known diseases could potentially cause a global health emergency.
The governments and charities are asking for more assistance, calling on funders at the World Economic Forum Davos to raise another $500 million.
BBC reports new vaccines take around a decade to develop, but The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) wants to have two experimental vaccines developed within the next five years.
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Welcome Trust, a biomedical research charity based in London, told the BBC, “In the modern world with urbanisation and travel, 21st Century epidemics could start in a big city and then take off the way Ebola did in West Africa.”
Ebola killed more than 11,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
Zika, another major virus outbreak in Brazil, has left thousands of children brain-damaged.
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