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I fear retaliation. I am going to work as usual but I am not at all calm. Every day I expect strange phone calls from Geneva announcing unpleasant news. ‘
Francesco Zambon, a physician specializing in health planning, is the official at the WHO Venice office who coordinated the report on the Italian management of the first wave of the epidemic, “An unprecedented challenge. Italy’s first response to Covid-19. “Published on May 13 and withdrawn in less than 24 hours, the report is at the center of an international case because it reveals that the Italian plan against the pandemic was conceived in 2006 and only” reconfirmed “in 2017. After a long silence, overcoming a veto from WHO, Zambon speaks for the first time.
Dr. Zambon, why do you decide to speak only now?
“Too many false and infamous things have been said against me, for example that our report was full of errors and even that it was not a WHO document.”
Why was that withdrawn report on Italy so important?
“When we prepared it last spring, Italy was the country most affected by Covid-19 and had the eyes of the world on it. Little information had been leaked from China. If we follow the pandemic live, we could extrapolate key messages for policy makers in all countries, as well as for the population. We work day and night. We wanted it to serve to guide government decisions and save as many lives as possible. ‘
He also writes that the Italian plan for the pandemic dates back to 2006, and was only “reconfirmed” in 2017. Is this the step that prompted the WHO to withdraw the report?
“This passage has offended the sensitivity of a very specific person: Ranieri Guerra, assistant to the general director in Geneva, practically number two in the WHO. Guerra wrote me an email saying “stay out of it” and to change the date of the Italian plan to “December 2016.” I wanted us to insert the word updated, but I refused because it was just copy and paste. To write ‘updated’ would have been to declare false ».
How is the intervention explained?
“I believe that this is where the entire conflict of interest arises for Ranieri Guerra, who between 2013 and 2017 was head of health prevention at the Italian Ministry of Health, the department designated to update the pandemic plan. Maybe Guerra thought he could intimidate me in his role as deputy director of the WHO. I have reported the incorrectness to all internal bodies.
He also wrote a letter to Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO director general. What did she say?
“I explained to him that Guerra had threatened me with strong reprisals if I did not follow his instructions. The day the first episode of the Report on the pandemic plan was about to be aired, he called me on the phone to say: “I’m at Tedros’s door, if you don’t change those passages I’ll tell him that it was you who attacked the WHO.” . He was very scared by the threat. Tedros never answered me.
Although the WHO had invoked diplomatic immunity, he decided to go to prosecutors in Bergamo to testify.
«A freedom that Ranieri Guerra had already taken away: if they punish me they will have to punish him too. I spoke with the pm for 5 hours and came away very relieved. I was struck by how well prepared they were even in very complex aspects.
Is Italy more prepared today?
Let’s say it was ‘an unprecedented challenge’. And it still is.
