Science and Health

Critics say WHO overstated H1N1 threat

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-14 08:51

LONDON: When the H1N1 alarm began last year, the United Kingdom, with a population of around 60 million, set up special procedures, suspended normal rules, and told national and local authorities to prepare for 65,000 deaths, prepare the morgues for record numbers of fatalities and instructed the armed forces to be on stand-by.

Polish patients wait to see doctors at a local clinic in Lomianki, near Warsaw yesterday. Poland has refused to buy flu vaccines out of safety fears. [Agencies]

But record so far is less than 5,000 cases and 251 deaths - the vast majority of which occurred in patients with serious underlying chronic health problems - or a death rate 260 times less than that expected.

The numbers have pushed some opinion leaders to say the A/H1N1 scare was a "campaign of panic" and a "false pandemic" - and that the vaccines, based on cancerous cells, send the chilling message "there is worse to come".

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, was among them. For him, the pandemic of H1N1 was no more and no less than a campaign to create a false notion of insecurity for the pharmaceutical companies to cash in. "The great campaign of panic we have seen provided a golden opportunity for representatives from labs who knew they would hit the jackpot in the case of a pandemic being declared," he declared.

Claiming that the "pandemic" is "one of the great medicine scandals of the century," Wodarg has called for an enquiry. The resolution he proposed for an investigation into the role of the pharma companies in the A H1N1 story has been passed by the Council of Europe, which is based in Strasbourg. An emergency debate will be held at the end of January.

"We want to clarify everything that brought about this massive operation of disinformation," declared Wodarg, adding that a group of people in the World Health Organization "is associated very closely with the pharmaceutical industry".

Facing the charges that that it exaggerated the dangers of swine flu, the World Health Organization (WHO) is to review its handling of the HIN1 swine flu pandemic, once it is over.

WHO welcomes debate

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a news briefing: "Criticism is part of an outbreak cycle. We expect and indeed welcome criticism and the chance to discuss it," she said, adding the WHO's review would involve independent outside experts and its results would be made public.

In the latest complaint about the way authorities have dealt with the pandemic, the Council of Europe, a political forum of most European countries, plans a formal investigation later this month into whether drug companies influenced public health officials to spend money unnecessarily on stockpiles of H1N1 vaccines.

Chaib said the WHO took its work of providing independent advice to its 193 member states seriously, and guarded against the influence of vested interests.

More than 12,700 people worldwide have died from H1N1. While the virus has turned out to be less deadly than feared, the real toll is much higher and will take several years to establish, the WHO says.

The WHO initially urged rapid development of treatments and vaccines, fearing the virus had the potential to kill millions.

As a result wealthy countries spent billions on medicines which many believe are now unnecessary.

Vaccines being resold

Across Europe, governments are trying to resell their stockpiles of swine flu vaccine. Several countries are cutting back orders for H1N1 vaccines as it becomes clear that the outbreak, declared a global pandemic by the WHO in June, is not as severe as at first feared.

Governments will have an opportunity to question the WHO about H1N1 at a meeting of its 34-member board next week.

Developing countries still lack adequate access to both antivirals and vaccines despite donations from industrialized countries and drug makers, the WHO said.

Some 200 million doses of H1N1 vaccine and funding of some $12 million have been pledged to date, it said in a document prepared for the board.

"Significant progress in international solidarity has been achieved, through donations by developed countries and manufacturers, but overall access to antiviral medicines and vaccines in developing countries remains limited," it said.

GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis are among H1N1 vaccine producers.

The WHO last week delivered donated H1N1 vaccine to Mongolia and Azerbaijan, the first of 95 developing and middle-income countries targeted to receive supplies.

It aims to provide these countries with enough vaccine to cover 10 percent of their populations, with health care workers a top priority.

The WHO said last week that southern hemisphere countries struck by H1N1 last year are now broadly protected against new infections, and sickness levels are declining in much of the northern hemisphere, including North America where it first emerged last April.

AP-BBC-Russian news website Pravda