World Health Organization

Council of Europe calls for WHO flu handling probe

Topics:
0

AFP – June 24, 2010

STRASBOURG — The Council of Europe called Thursday for a probe into the World Health Organisation's handling of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak, which it said led to unjustified scares and waste of public money.

A council parliamentary assembly identified "grave shortcomings" about WHO transparency about its position on the flu, "generating concerns about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on decisions taken," a statement said.

WHO slammed for handling of flu pandemic

Topics:
0

By Marlowe Hood (AFP) – June 4, 2010

PARIS — The World Health Organisation's handling of the swine flu pandemic was deeply marred by secrecy and conflict of interest with drug companies, a top medical journal said on Friday.

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that WHO guidelines on the use of antiviral drugs were prepared by experts who had received consulting fees from the top two manufacturers of these drugs, Roche and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

WHO accused of losing public confidence over flu pandemic

Topics:
0

Sarah Boseley – The Guardian, March 28, 2010

Loss of credibility could endanger lives, says vice chair of Council of Europe's health committee.

The World Health Organisation and other public health bodies have "gambled away" public confidence by overstating the dangers of the flu pandemic, according to a draft report to the Council of Europe. The report, by the Labour MP Paul Flynn, vice chair of the council's health committee, says that a loss of credibility could endanger lives.

Did WHO experts fuel swine flu scare?

Topics:
0

Rema Nagarajan , TNN, 13 January 2010

Even as questions are being raised about whether the swine flu scare was exaggerated to benefit pharma companies, evidence has surfaced that several members of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) vaccine board which pushed countries to buy the H1N1 vaccine have had significant ties with pharma companies.

This fact, which is bound to raise issues of conflict of interest, was exposed by Danish daily ‘Information’ last month. TOI attempted to get WHO’s response, but several emails sent to the office of the WHO director-general on January 9 met with no response.

EU to probe pharma over “false pandemic”

Topics:
0

January 4, 2010

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is to hold an emergency debate and inquiry this month into the “influence” exerted by drugmakers on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) global H1N1 flu campaign.

The text of the resolution approved by the Assembly calling for the debate and inquiry states that: “in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.”

Syndicate content