As the coronavirus epidemic grows, the World Health Organization finds itself under intense pressure to improve as it hopes US President-elect Joe Biden and Washington will reverse Washington’s decision to leave the health agency.
With its annual meeting underway this week, the WHO has been sharply criticized for not playing a stronger and more vocal role in controlling the epidemic.
For example, in private insider meetings in the early days of the virus, top scientists described some countries’ approaches as “an unfortunate laboratory for studying the virus” and a “macabre” opportunity to see what worked, according to recordings obtained by the Associated Press show. Yet in public, the UN health agency praised the government for its response.
Biden has vowed to overturn the decision of President Trump, who severed U.S. ties with the agency in June and led WHO funding to “US global health priorities.” The WHO has also leaned towards demands from independent panel member countries to review its epidemiological response management, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanam Ghebrieus said Monday that the agency welcomes “any and all efforts” to strengthen it. Whom we serve. “
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The World Health Organization (WHO) Director General of the Center, Tedros Adhanam Brebriasus is holding a news conference on March 9, 2020 at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
One of the central dilemmas facing the WHO is that it has no enforcement power or authority to independently investigate countries. Instead, the health agency relies on behind-the-scenes negotiations and cooperation from member countries.
Critics say the traditional reluctance of the WHO to confront its member countries has reached a high price. As the Covid-1 spread spread, the WHO repeatedly refrained from inviting countries, such as Japan, France and Britain, which made repeated mistakes, according to documents from internal WHO meetings obtained by the Associated Press from January to April. .
Some public health experts say the failure of the WHO could compromise countries adopting risky outbreak policies in their efforts to prevent the virus from failing to increase its effectiveness.
“We need the WHO to be courageous and use their political power to their name and shame because the consequences are so devastating,” said Sophie Harman, a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University in London. “This is the moment of their Spanish flu … WHO undermines its own authority by burning the planet, not speaking when countries are doing questionable things.”
Others said it would be politically foolish for the WHO to give the agency more power and the ability to censor countries – an option that Germany and France have recently proposed.
“If Tedros takes a very aggressive stance towards member countries, there will be reactions,” said Suri Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Geneva Graduate Institute, referring to the WHO’s director general.
WHO spokesman Farah Dakhllah said that since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, “WHO officials have had and continue to have clear and open discussions with their government counterparts … We are proud of an institutional culture that promotes open discussion with the goal of reaching life savings. Solutions. “
One of the scientists at the meetings, Dr. Michael, the head of the crisis. Michael Ryan also gave the WHO’s approach in response to a media question on March 11 about whether the agency was willing to say which countries were not doing enough.
“The answer to that question is, you know who you are,” Rhea said. “The WHO does not communicate in public or criticize our member countries in public. All we are trying to do is work constructively with our member countries. ”
It is not unprecedented, however, for the WHO to question its member countries in public. He threatened to close China’s office while the country was hiding at the time of the SARS outbreak, Nigeria was called out for a boycott of the polio vaccine in 2003, and accused Tanzania of not sharing enough information about the Ebola epidemic last year.
The review of the WHO’s role in the epidemic has come at a crucial time as the agency is now tasked with helping to procure and distribute coronavirus vaccines worldwide, especially for poorer countries. U.S. And some countries, including Russia, have refused to join the effort, but on Sunday, WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminath said he hoped Biden’s election would “open the door” to US inclusion.
According to an earlier report, the WHO’s freshness in inviting countries began with China. Despite a January meeting between Tedros and Chinese President Xi Jinping, reports of an outbreak during February were still rare. Maria van Kerkov, WHO’s technical lead for the Covid-19, noted that the agency “lacks enough detail to say what worked and what didn’t.”
Yet in a media briefing soon, Tedros said, “China is doing a lot of good things that are slowing down the virus and the facts speak for themselves.”
Even in February, WHO scientists were concerned about Japan. On February 1, the passenger who landed the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Hong Kong tested positive for coronavirus. At the next stop of the Yokohama ship, 10 more cases were found, and authorities placed all 3,711 people on board under the L’Oreal cordon.
RJ told reporters at the time: “Let’s be careful here so as not to overdo it.” But on February 10, the count of the case almost doubled overnight.
Not surprising given the nature of the response to the investigation, Rhea told an internal meeting that only a small number of epidemic outbreaks were assigned to epidemiologists. “If you double the number of cases in the ship in one day, something is not right.”
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Head of Acute Events Management Team Dr. WH. Thomas Green told his colleagues that the WHO had discussed the outbreak with their Japanese counterparts, but had failed to obtain much useful information.
“It’s a very sensitive issue and we need to tread carefully,” he warned.
Although the WHO was easily aware that the situation was deteriorating, scientists said the outbreak could help understand the COVID-19 transmission pattern.
“(It’s) unfortunate, but it’s a useful opportunity to study the natural history of the virus,” Ray said.
Several days later, a Japanese outbreak specialist, Dr. Cantaro went to the Iwata Diamond Princess and called the response “completely chaotic.” Shortly afterwards, the WHO announced that more than half of the world-famous COVID-19 cases were on the Diamond Princess outside of China.
“It was clear on the cruise ship that things were going badly wrong and the WHO should say something,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaboration Center on Georgetown University’s Public Health Law and Human Rights. “When countries are doing what is wrong, we need the WHO to say so.”
While the WHO was not specific, Tedros said on February 26: “One of our biggest challenges is that many affected countries are still not sharing data with the WHO.”
During February and March, COVID-19 exploded in South Korea, Singapore, Iran, and elsewhere. The virus also set foot in Italy and turned Europe into an epidemic.
At the WHO, officials were concerned in internal meetings about the lack of information from European member countries. Gray said WHO’s efforts to get more details about the spiral outbreak “failed visibly.”
Yet on March 8, Tedros tweeted that “the Italian government and people are taking bold, courageous steps to slow down the spread of the #coronavirus and protect their country and the world.” Three days later, Tedros declared COVID-19 an epidemic, saying the announcement was made by some countries due to “alarming levels of inactivity”, which he did not name.
Gostin of Georgetown University said the WHO should be obliged to report publicly when countries do not share enough data.
“If a country doesn’t provide great epidemiological or biological information, the WHO and the world are flying blind to the outbreak and we can’t have that.”
The WHO also complained privately about the stockpiling of rare epidemic supplies in Western countries.
“We had a terrible situation yesterday (protective personal devices) where all supplies were demanded in France and we lost access,” Ryan told his colleagues. He said the WHO needs to push countries and companies to avoid similar situations.
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In early March, as European countries moved to adopt measures of social distance and to abolish mass gatherings, Ryan noted that one country had not done so: Britain.
“There is not a single sports event in Europe and yet all the Premier League matches in the UK are going to go on as usual,” he said. Ryan called Britain’s epidemic strategy “problematic” after hearing the UK’s chief scientific officer publicly say the country was aiming for mob immunity.
“To make it happen, hundreds, thousands and millions of people are going to get infected in the elderly and there’s only going to be so many deaths,” Ryan said. However, he said, the different approaches to tackling COVID-19 globally could prove to be a “massive ecological study” that would allow the WHO to document what has worked best.
“It’s crooked in some ways, but that’s the reality,” he said.
Going forward, the role of the WHO in bringing out the epidemic will continue to depend on the panel’s review. Human, an expert from Queen Mary University, sympathizes that Covid-1. In the early months of the WHO there was a very big responsibility on the WHO, but he said that even more challenges than this are now less.
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“This is not an experiment for the WHO to learn a lesson for the future, the stakes are very high,” he said. “With the next wave of epidemics, I think the time for quiet diplomacy has passed.”
