Crisis management for the future: Building a platform to provide information on emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases from normal times in Japan

Eisuke Adachi; Amato Otani; Hiroshi Yotsuyanagi; Masayuki Saijo; Tomoya Saito

doi:10.35772/ghm.2023.01089

Crisis management for the future: Building a platform to provide information on emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases from normal times in Japan

Glob Health Med. 2024 Apr 30;6(2):156-159. doi: 10.35772/ghm.2023.01089.

Authors

Eisuke Adachi¹, Amato Otani¹, Hiroshi Yotsuyanagi¹, Masayuki Saijo^{2

3}, Tomoya Saito⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Infectious Diseases and Applied Immunology, IMSUT Hospital of the Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
² National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan.
³ Public Health Office, Health and Welfare Bureau, City of Sapporo, Sapporo, Japan.
⁴ Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

At the beginning of the mpox (disease caused by monkey pox) epidemic, there was no platform in Japan to provide appropriate information on emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), and the number of accesses to bioterrorism-related information sites increased rapidly. Even though the interest in mpox was much smaller than in coronavirus infectious disease, emerged in late 2019 (COVID-19), the increase in the number of views were much greater than during the COVID-19 epidemic. This may not be because mpox is bioterrorism-related as an analog of smallpox, but rather because there were no other websites providing information on mpox. For future crisis management, there should be a platform to provide information on possible epidemics of EIDs from normal times in Japan.

Keywords: COVID-19; EIDs; mpox; social media platforms.

2024, National Center for Global Health and Medicine.