WHO Items of Note

Several recent items are worth noting as the World Health Organization (WHO) remains at the center of the international response to coronavirus.

Andrew Lakoff, author of a new book on public health emergencies, provides some background on the WHO’s response to recent health crises and, in particular, how accusations of overreach in the H1N1 crisis may have impacted the organization’s coronavirus response:

Critics in Europe accused WHO of having exaggerated the pandemic threat in order to generate profits for the pharmaceutical industry, pointing to consulting arrangements that the agency’s influenza experts had with vaccine manufacturers. According to one prominent critic, the WHO declaration of a health emergency in response to H1N1 was “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century.”

And writing in Maclean’s, three Canadian experts weigh in on how to respond to what they view as China’s violations of the WHO’s international health regulations:

International Health Regulations (IHR) govern global health law on an international scale. For its mishandling of its COVID-19 outbreak, China is in violation of Articles six and seven. Article six requires that states first notify the WHO of an event of public health emergency concern and provide any timely, accurate and detailed public health information available to it. Article seven extends this to circumstances that include a state seeing evidence of an unexpected or unusual public health event within its territory that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern even if the origin or source of it is unknown.  

The authors acknowledge that most international legal paths to accountability—including the IHR’s own dispute resolution process—are probably closed. Among their suggestions for circumnavigating the obstacles: using the power of individualized national sanctions against any Chinese officials deemed responsible for any misinformation.