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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19360

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Electronic Source

Silverman E
WHO Pandemic Moves Not Swayed By Pharma
Pharmalot 2011 Mar 10
http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/03/who-pandemic-moves-not-swayed-by-pharma/


Full text:

Last year, the World Health Organization was criticized for refusing to disclose the identities of panel members who helped make decisions about the H1N1 pandemic and their declared conflicts of interest, such as paid work for drugmakers. It was not until the pandemic was declared officially over last summer that the WHO released their names and pertinent info (see this).
The issue threatened to stain the WHO because of concerns that its Emergency Committee members were unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. Now, though, the WHO Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations, another group of outside advisors, has released a draft report saying there is no proof industry swayed WHO decision making on the pandemic.
“The WHO performed well in many ways during the pandemic, confronted systemic difficulties and demonstrated some shortcomings. The committee found no evidence of malfeasance,” the reviewers wrote. However, they did acknowlege several institutional and managerial shortcomings, such as insisting on keeping identities confidential and failing to have a regular method for handling conflicts.
One problem: “The decision to keep confidential the identities of Emergency Committee members. Athough confidentiality represented an understandable effort to protect the members from external pressures, this paradoxically fed suspicions that the organization had something to hide. While the decision was consistent with WHO practices for other expert committees, whose identities are normally divulged only at the end of what is often a one-day consultation, this practice was not well-suited to a committee whose service would extend over many months,” they write in the draft.
Another: “Lack of a sufficiently robust, systematic and open set of procedures for disclosing, recognizing and managing conflicts of interest among expert advisers. In particular, potential conflicts of interest among Emergency Committee members were not managed in a timely fashion by WHO. Five members of the Emergency Committee and an adviser to the Emergency Committee declared potential conflicts of interest. None of these were determined sufficiently important to merit the members’ exclusion from the Emergency Committee.”
In short, there was a “failure to acknowledge legitimate reasons for some criticism, in particular, inconsistent descriptions of a pandemic, or the lack of timely disclosure of relationships potentially constituting a conflict of interest among experts who advised on plans and response to the pandemic. In such instances, WHO may have inadvertently contributed to confusion and suspicion (and responded) with insufficient vigour to criticisms that questioned the integrity of the organization.”
Overall, the WHO was also upbraided for its overall handling of the pandemic that led to public confusion and uncertainty about the extent of the problem and how to respond. One example cited was the “absence of a consistent, measurable and understandable depiction of severity of the pandemic…and the decision to diminish proactive communication with the media after declaring Phase 6 (the WHO term for a pandemic) was ill-advised. Specifically, discontinuing routine press conferences focused on the evolving pandemic was not a good idea.

 

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