Common sense dictates that medical decisions with the potential to affect the health of millions shouldn’t be influenced by political considerations. Unfortunately, that quality appears to be in short supply at the World Health Organization (WHO), which has thrown caution to the wind with a series of decisions apparently swayed by national lobbies at the expense of medical knowledge and good judgment.
One need look no further than WHO’s response to the Zika virus, which is linked to birth defects. Last month more than 150 medical experts urged WHO Director-General Margaret Chan to move or delay the 2016 Summer Olympics scheduled to take place in Rio de Janeiro in August, citing the clear threat posed by Zika to the roughly half million foreign visitors expected to descend on Brazil. WHO brushed off the warning, doubling down on its assertion that “there is no public health justification for postponing or cancelling the games.” This is hard to square with what we know about Zika, which can spread from person to person via mosquitos and sexual intercourse, and has proliferated across the Western Hemisphere with alarming speed. What, if not expert consensus, is guiding the WHO decision?
This is not the first case of WHO bungling the response to an epidemic. Following the 2013-2014 Ebola outbreak in west Africa, medical experts from the Harvard Global Health Institute and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine slammed the agency’s response in the Lancet: “Ebola exposed WHO as unable to meet its responsibility for responding to such situations and alerting the global community.” The expert council attributed this debacle in large part to political pressure on WHO from member states.
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