A Note to Legislators About What Ceding Power to the World Health Organisation Really Means

We are told that, in a world of multiplying health emergencies, it has become necessary to give up some independence in return for safety. It is a tribute to those backing this agenda through the World Health Organisation (WHO) that this message continues to gain traction. If humans are important, then we should also understand its flaws, and decide whether they matter.

1. The World Health Organisation is not independent, and is significantly privately directed.

Early WHO funding was dominated by ‘assessed’ contributions from countries, based on their national income, and the WHO decided how to use this core funding to achieve greatest impact. Now, WHO funding is mainly ‘specified’, meaning that the funder may decide how and where the work will be done. The WHO has become a conduit through which a funder can implement programmes from which they stand to benefit. These funders are increasingly private entities; the second largest funder of the WHO is the foundation of a software entrepreneur and Pharma investor.

In ceding power to the WHO, a state will be ceding power to the funders of the WHO. They can then profit by imposing the increasingly centralised and commodity-based approach that the WHO is taking.

2. People in democracies cannot be subject to dictatorships.

The WHO rightly represents all countries. This means that member states run by military dictatorships or other non-democratic regimes have an equal say at the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO’s governing body.

In ceding power to the WHO, democratic States are therefore sharing decision-making power over the health of their own citizens with these non-democratic states, some of which will have geopolitical reasons to restrict the movement of a democratic state’s people and harm its economy. While equal say in policy may be appropriate for a purely advisory organisation, ceding actual power over citizens to such an organisation is obviously incompatible with democracy.

3. The WHO is not accountable to those it seeks to control.

Democratic states have systems through which those allowed to wield power over citizens wield it only at the citizens’ will, and are subject to independent courts for malfeasance or gross and harmful incompetence. This is necessary to address the corruption that always arises, as institutions are run by humans. Like other branches of the United Nations, the WHO is answerable to itself and the geo-politics of the WHA. Even the UN secretariat has limited influence as the WHO operates under its own constitution.

No one will be held accountable for the nearly quarter million children that UNICEF estimates were killed by policies that the WHO promoted in South Asia. None of the up to 10 million girls forced into child marriage by the WHO’s Covid policies will have any path for redress. Such lack of accountability may be acceptable if an institution is simply giving advice, but it is completely unacceptable for any institution that has powers to restrict, mandate or even censor a country’s citizens.

4. Centralisation through the WHO is poor policy by incompetent people.

Before the influx of private money, the WHO’s focus was high burden endemic infectious disease, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. These are strongly associated with poverty, as are those arising from malnutrition and poor sanitation. Public health experience tells us that addressing such preventable or treatable diseases is the best way to lengthen lives and promote sustainable good health. They are most effectively addressed by people on the ground, with local knowledge of behaviour, culture and disease epidemiology. This involves empowering communities to manage their own health. The WHO once emphasised such decentralisation, advocating for the strengthening of primary care. It was consistent with the fight against fascism and colonialism within which the WHO arose.

Centralised approaches to health, in contrast, require communities and individuals to comply with dictats that ignore local heterogeneity and community priorities. Malaria is not an issue to Icelandic people, but it absolutely dwarfs Covid in Uganda. Both human rights and effective interventions require local knowledge and direction. The WHO pushed mass Covid vaccination onto sub-Saharan Africa for nearly two years through its most expensive program to date, while knowing a large majority of the population were already immune, half were under 20, and deaths from each of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs absolutely dwarfed COVID-19 mortality.

The WHO’s staff are rarely experts. Experience in the 2009 Swine flu and West African Ebola outbreaks demonstrated that. Many have spent decades sitting in an office with minimal experience in programme implementation or practical disease management. Country quotas and the nepotism associated with large international organisations mean that most countries will have far greater expertise within their borders than exists in a closeted bureaucracy in Geneva.

5. Real pandemics are not common, and are not becoming more common.

Pandemics due to respiratory viruses, as the WHO pointed out in 2019, are rare events. They have occurred about once per generation over the past 120 years. Since the advent of antibiotics (for primary or secondary infections), mortality has dropped dramatically. An increase in mortality recorded during COVID-19 was complicated by definitions (‘with’ versus ‘of’), the average age of death was over 75 and death was unusual in healthy people. The global infection mortality rate was not greatly different to influenza. Tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS and most other common infections kill at a much younger age, imparting a greater burden in life years lost.

In summary

It makes no sense to grant a foreign-based, unaccountable institution powers that contradict democratic norms and good public health policy. More so when this institution has limited expertise and a poor track record, is directed by private interests and influenced by authoritarian governments. This is obviously counter to what a government in a democracy is supposed to do.

This is not a matter of domestic political rivalries. However, the public relations departments of the prospective beneficiaries of this perpetual health emergency project would like us to believe it is. We are currently funding the dismantling of our own independence and ceding our human rights to a small group that stands to benefit from our impoverishment, financed from a war chest accrued through the pandemic just ended. We don’t have to. It is as straightforward to see through this as it should be to stop it. All that is needed is clarity, honesty and a little courage.

Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a member of the Executive Committee of PANDA.