This morning's Rear Vision program on ABC's Radio National focused on the H1N1 virus and whether the World Health Organisation made the right call in declaring a pandemic in 2009. In True diligence or conspiracy: The WHO's handling of Swine Flu? Annabelle Quince interviews Dr Deborah Cohen, one of the co-authors of a recent BMJ article criticising WHO, and Dr Gregory Hartl, The World Health Organisation's spokesperson for H1N1. The program is repeated on Sunday at 1.30 pm.
In Australia, 21 million doses of swine flu vaccine were purchased in accordance with WHO's pandemic guidelines. A year later, only 9 million of those have been distributed and the remainder is unused. Cohen's article, "WHO and the pandemic flu 'conspiracies'" (BMJ 2010;340:c2912) is available free online and criticises the procedures used by the WHO, claiming that a number of the WHO experts have had financial links with pharmaceutical companies producing antiviral drugs and influenza vaccines. Read Margaret Chan's response in "WHO Director-General responds to the BMJ" published only yesterday.
No comments:
Post a Comment