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The World Health Organization (WHO) is being accused of conspiring with the Italian Ministry of Health to withdraw a report that reported mismanagement of the start of the pandemic in Italy. The document, which was intended to prevent future deaths from covid-19, was published on May 13 on the WHO website and was not published the next day.
According to the 102-page document, Italy’s pandemic plan has not been updated since 2006, so given the lack of preparedness, the initial response of Italian hospitals to the outbreak was “improvised, chaotic and creative,” the newspaper said. . The Guardian “.
Formal guidelines were also delayed, notes the report titled “An Unprecedented Challenge: Italy’s First Response to COVID-19,” which was funded by the Kuwaiti government, with the aim of providing useful information to countries that have yet to they had been hit. for the new coronavirus. Italy was the first European country to be attacked. Last Sunday it exceeded the barrier of 60,000 deaths related to covid-19, being the European country where this record is highest.
The document was allegedly withdrawn at the request of Ranieri Guerra, Deputy Director General for Strategic Initiatives at WHO, who had been Director General for Preventive Health at the Italian Ministry of Health between 2014 and the end of 2017. In this capacity, he was the Responsible for updating the pandemic plan according to the new guidelines of the WHO and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Ranieri Guerra is still among the scientists of the Italian government’s covid-19 task force.
According to The Guardian, the outdated plan is seen as a crucial element in prosecutors’ investigations in Bergamo, Lombardy, against possible criminal negligence by authorities. Lombardy was the most affected Italian region during the first wave of the pandemic.
10,000 deaths may be associated with a lack of protocols
Investigators are also using a report drawn up after the first wave by a retired army general, Pier Paolo Lunelli, who concluded that up to 10,000 deaths may have resulted from a lack of sufficient anti-pandemic protocols, the British newspaper notes.
Francesco Zambon, one of the eleven European WHO scientists who produced the censored report, says Ranieri Guerra threatened to fire him, unless he changed the part of the text that refers to the outdated plan. It also accuses the WHO of not having opened any internal investigation, despite having informed its senior officials of the threats and risks to the transparency and neutrality of the organization.
At the time, the WHO did not justify the reason for removing the report, but in a statement last week, it said the document “contained inaccuracies and inconsistencies.”
The WHO also used the immunity of Francesco Zambon and the other scientists involved in the making of the report to prevent them from being questioned by the prosecutor. Prosecutors only heard from Ranieri Guerra in early November, but the content of the hearing was not disclosed.
“The report did not criticize the Italian government, but highlighted the critical points faced in the management of the pandemic, based on the premise of the old anti-pandemic plan, which was only ‘reconfirmed’ and not updated in 2017,” Zambon tells “The Guardian “. “The team verified this thoroughly and found that all post-2006 plans were copied and pasted, no words or commas were changed in the text,” he adds.
The scientist assures that, a month before publication, he sent a sketch of the findings to Ranieri Guerra, who showed it to the Italian Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, who has already come to deny any implication in the case.
If prosecutors in Bergamo believe that Italy has not updated its plan against the pandemic, all health ministers and prime ministers since 2013 are at risk of going to trial.
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