The WHO and other public health bodies have “gambled away” public confidence by overstating the dangers of the flu pandemic, a draft report to the Council of Europe said.
The report, by the British Labour Member of Parliament Paul Flynn, vice chair of the council’s health committee, says that a loss of credibility could endanger lives.
“This decline in confidence could be risky in the future,” the report says. “When the next pandemic arises many persons may not give full credibility to recommendations put forward by WHO and other bodies. They may refuse to be vaccinated and may put their own health and lives at risk.”
PHOTO: EPA
In Britain, Flynn said, the discrepancy between the estimate of the numbers of people who would die from flu and the reality was dramatic.
“In the United Kingdom, the Department of Health initially announced that around 65,000 deaths were to be expected. In the meantime, by the start of 2010, this estimate was downgraded to only 1,000 fatalities. By January 2010, fewer than 5,000 persons had been registered as having caught the disease and about 360 deaths had been noted,” his report said.
Public Health Minister Gillian Merron told Flynn in a meeting for the report that a Cabinet Office investigation was looking into Britain’s handling of the outbreak and would report some time after June. Countries across Europe reacted very differently to the pandemic, the report says. Not all mounted high-profile vaccination campaigns, as did the UK.
Flynn’s draft accuses the WHO of a lack of transparency. Some members of its advisory groups are flu experts who have also received funding, especially for research projects, from pharmaceutical companies making drugs and vaccines against flu.
“The neutrality of their advice could be contested,” the report said. “To date, WHO has failed to provide convincing evidence to counter these allegations and the organization has not published the relevant declarations of interest.”
Flynn’s report was commissioned by the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly, which is holding an inquiry into the handling by European bodies and governments of the flu pandemic. The second evidence session will be held in Paris yesterday. The witnesses will include Polish Health Minister Ewa Kopacz, who will explain why her government decided not to order any H1N1 vaccines.
One of the central questions of the Council of Europe inquiry, Flynn said, “concerns the possibility for representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to directly influence public decisions taken with regard to the H1N1 influenza, and the question of whether some of their statements had been adopted as public health recommendations without being based on sufficient scientific evidence.”
He cited as an example the decision to recommend two doses of flu vaccine for children, which was later questioned.
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