Comments on: WHO Report Details Accountability In Director Chan’s First Term

Comments on: WHO Report Details Accountability In Director Chan’s First Term http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/07/02/who-report-details-accountability-in-director-chans-first-term/ Original news and analysis on international IP policy Tue, 21 May 2013 22:28:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Riaz K tayob http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/07/02/who-report-details-accountability-in-director-chans-first-term/comment-page-1/#comment-5016341 Riaz K tayob Tue, 03 Jul 2012 08:11:25 +0000 http://www.ip-watch.org/?p=22039#comment-5016341 [A positive report? Is this not the same Chan who:
1. facilitated the process on innovation for public health to be started upon the basis of a document that was a "helicopter drop" limiting the potential scope of action to a few diseases despite the WHOs own experts report that used economic categories;
2. allowed IMPACT to conflate intellectual property rights with counterfeit medicines while nary offering a word about legal counterfeits like fatal Vioxx (the unmentionable if one gets a salary from WHO);
3. left poor countries without access to vaccines during the "Swine Flu" pandemic while rich countries were complaining that the pre-purchase contracts for vaccines were triggered by a declaration of a pandemic that was only a pandemic because of the swingeing changes to the definition (form over substance), despite the fact that companies claims were made on vaccines sourced from poor countries subject to protections and benefit-sharing arrangements? Instead of sticking to its own guidelines in a show of "transparency" it removed the guidelines specifying benefit sharing so that US "research institutions" (aka proxies for private companies) could expropriate biodiversity from the poor countries and milk them for all it was worth (with the mainstream media pillorying and putting a frantic and desperate Indonesia on the stake for a right royal burning at the stake);
4. Added insult to injury in coming along with the WTO's Pascal Lamy of US and Mexican pig farmers saying it was safe to consume pork (when the virus was regarded as highly plastic - Evolution 101) while not taking even rhetorically a similar stance for poor countries access to medicines?
5. Took up Intellectual Property Rights issues up into her direct control, and under that watch Pharmaceutical companies got to make privileged commentary on the outcome document of Innovation and Public Health? (At least when the likes of Aitken where in the play the game was tough but smart, not this amateurish "hard power" of eager to please bureaucrats: one needs to watch and see if a replacement of equal perspicacity is coming up the ranks... (a smart enemy is better than a stupid friend)
6. Initiated processes to improve transparency and participation at WHO without changing designation of 'official relations' for civil society, keeping the WHO in archaic age when most UN bodies, even WIPO, have moved on... an arrangement that benefits corporate lobbies who have the wherewithal to help initiate changes in important designations like pandemics.
7. under her watch lost "progressives" like German Valsquez (access to meds) and Kathy Holloway (rational use of medicines, that fig leaf over Adam's navel given her recent filibustering) while those bureaucrats who allegedly maintained a "persona non grata" list of civil society people WHO officials could not speak to were promoted (one is reminded of two dialectical adages, cream floats to the top, but sh&t also floats!)
8. talks about evidence based health policy but does in effect nothing about conflicts of interest (even in the mild form of disclosures even in academic journals) which even Harvard medical students have sought fit to take up with regards to their professors and their links to BigPharma.
9. Waxes lyrical about being subordinate to the WTO and WIPO rules on intellectual property when poor countries have problems but is ever ready to come to defend developed countries like Australia in their trade mark disputes (a leader should be predictable and readable to breed stability imho, and perhaps Chan is). Moral pressure is one thing, but arguing that one is subordinate to WTO rules when countries have legal rights is sophistry...
10. Is happy to push all sorts of new ideas from the World Bank and IMF on how developing countries should run their health system but stays mum on the highly inefficient US health system, which the UK is now seeking to copy... (health imperialism (abroad) = health tyranny @ home)
11. Pushed the "Health Security" issue to the chagrin of many developing countries, while forgetting security of access to health care...
12. Did not take an activist role in health worker migration and allowed the rich countries to bludgeon the African initiatives on this matter...
BUT
What Chan has done is change the terms of the debate on a number of strategic issues. The first is the amount of WHOs budget that is controlled by member states (less than 20%). Second, at least opening more spaces for civil society participation - even though the rich "democratic" countries then take sessions into informal discussions where civil society is excluded... Third, by meeting with "radical" civil society like PHM (but of course, insisting allegedly on no discussion of intellectual property rights issues)... These are not easy changes, but it seems like some of Chan's advisers are more servants to other forces than for health and her legacy...

The choice essentially is whether Chan wants to go down as a well groomed bureaucrat or a leader in health. From the trajectory taken it seems like bureaucrat with tactically inept advisers is the preview for forthcoming WHO attractions... This is because the normal bureaucratic turf wars that characterise organisations seem to be missing at WHO... instead of trying to reclaim or retain turf and budget WHO just lets it slide... compounding its irrelevance to poor peoples' needs...

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