INTRODUCTION
When the metaphorical ship of a growing,
prosperous world hit the figurative iceberg of Covid-19, it sank and it sank
like no ship had ever sunk before. While all of this happened, the WHO behaved
very much like the band in the movie ‘Titanic’ that continued to play songs
while lives were lost and the ship sank.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was
established on 7th April, 1948 and was entrusted with the responsibility
of creating a better, healthier future for people all over the world. It was
assigned the role of providing leadership on matters critical to health,
shaping the research agenda and stimulating the generation, translation and
dissemination of valuable knowledge. However, when D-Day beckoned, the WHO
failed and it failed gloriously. Just when the world was looking up to this
multinational body, it failed with repercussions that will perhaps only get
worse in the course of time.
Covid-19 has fallen like a clutch of bombs
on the world. As of today, the number of coronavirus cases stands at a
bewildering figure of 1,71,51,191 and has claimed 6,69,435 innocent lives. It
is truly astonishing that despite technical advancements, life-changing inventions
and incredible leaps in the field of medicine, we are still in such a situation
that things are worsening day after day, every day. There is perhaps nothing
better to showcase the gruesomeness of our reality. This is the question
uppermost in the minds of everyone, whether a daily wage labourer in a small
village in Uttar Pradesh, or a migrant worker desperately trying to go back
home from Mumbai to Bihar. The world today asks the same question and does so
in bewilderment when a prestigious and well-funded global watchdog for health,
the WHO, appears to have fallen flat on its face.
Let us look at the attitude that the
international health body has displayed. Look at the statements of some of its
members, such as Prof. Dieder Houssin, who is also a member of the Review
Committee, International Health Regulations. On 23rd January he
said, ‘Now is not the time. That’s a bit too early to consider that this
event is a public health emergency of international concern’.
These comments were made on the exact day
when the lockdown commenced in the city of Wuhan where it all started. It is
perhaps because of the sluggishness and negligence of such massive proportions
that we face a time where there is little hope for those who have to choose
between food on the table and contracting the deadly virus. The world today is
paying the cost for the blunders committed by the WHO. Its leadership has
proved to be ineffective and is likely to adversely affect the lives of
billions who now confront a prolonged tragedy worsened by an economic slowdown
of gigantic proportions.
Through this paper I attempt to draw the
reader’s attention to the shortcomings of and the blunders committed by the WHO
which have led us to where we are today.
BACK IN TIME
The SARS epidemic of 2002-03 had let loose
fear, concern and death in a similar manner. Even then, China was slow to
acknowledge the epidemic domestically and failed to inform the global community
about its possible spread.
During the SARS epidemic, WHO was quick to
recommend travel restrictions and criticise China for delaying the submission
of vital information that would have limited its global spread. Even after
eradication of SARS, WHO warned that the world would not remain free from other
novel forms of the coronavirus. The then Director-General of WHO, Dr Gro Harlem
Brundtland, implored the international community to investigate possible animal
reservoirs that could be a source for future outbreaks and better study the
movement of the virus to humans.
China’s wet markets were specifically
identified as a likely environment for the virus to incubate and jump from
animals to humans. The mutable nature of the virus, coupled with China’s rapid
urbanisation, proximity to exotic animals and refusal to tackle illegal
wildlife trade and commerce, were together termed a ‘time bomb’ by a research
paper in 2007.
As late as December, 2015 the coronavirus
family of diseases was selected to be included in a list of priorities
requiring urgent research and development. It was earmarked as a primary
contender for emerging diseases likely to cause a major pandemic.
JUMP TO PRESENT
Here is a list of mistakes that the WHO
committed. Had these been avoided, it could have changed the history of the
world as we know it today.
Mistake 1: Sluggish reaction
China informed WHO on 31st
December, 2019, while it was first public on news channels on 8th
January, 2020. Surprisingly, when a pneumonia-like virus was detected in Wuhan
in late December, 2019, the WHO reacted sluggishly. Dr. Tedros Adhanom,
Director-General of WHO, applauded China’s ‘commitment to transparency’ in the
early days of the epidemic in January.
Mistake 2: Denied human-to-human
transmission
The WHO denied evidence of human-to-human
transmission on 14th January, 2020 which has now become a famous
tweet by the WHO.
WHO refused to acknowledge the
human-to-human transmission of the virus despite several cases already showing
transmission. WHO also castigated countries like the USA and India who started
restricting flights to and from China or issued travel advisories.
Mistake
3: Ignored Taiwan which had critical information
One country that got their advice was
Taiwan, which also warned the WHO that it suspected the virus was spreading
through human-to-human transmission. Taiwan, which has one of the lowest rates
of known Covid-19 infections per capita among countries impacted by the virus,
was prevented from joining the WHO as a member country in 2015 by China which
refuses to acknowledge its independence. A newspaper headline of 3rd
April, 2020, said famously, ‘The WHO Ignores Taiwan. The World Pays the
Price’.
In late March, WHO Epidemiologist Bruce
Aylward declined to answer a Hong Kong reporter’s question about Taiwan, or
even acknowledge its existence.
As Taiwan was distributing facemasks to its
citizens, the WHO was advising the rest of the world that they were doing so
unnecessarily while initially the CDC and the US Surgeon-General followed its
lead; but health experts pointed out as to how mounting evidence that masks can
help slow the spread of respiratory diseases by about 50%, especially among
asymptomatic carriers in a population, and what the WHO maintained was
virtually non-existent despite mounting evidence to the contrary in
mid-February.
A CNN Health news article said, ‘Infected
people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we
realised”
While Beijing informed the WHO on 31st
December, there are expert estimates that the virus had spread to humans as far
back as October.
Mistake 4: Delayed response
Even after being told, the WHO showed no
urgency to send an investigative team, careful not to displease the Chinese
government. A joint WHO-Chinese team went to Wuhan only in mid-February and
wrote a report with decidedly Chinese characteristics misleading the entire
world of the then situation.
A South China Morning Post article said, ‘Coronavirus: China’s first confirmed Covid-19
case traced back to November 17’.
Mistake 5: Misled the world
Covid-19 continued to exhibit
characteristics of a pandemic, spreading rapidly around the world. But not only
did Dr. Tedros Adhanom and his team fail to declare a public health emergency,
they also urged the international community to not spread fear and stigma by
imposing travel restrictions.
The global health body even criticised early
travel restrictions by the US as being excessive and unnecessary. It declared
Covid-19 as a pandemic only on 11th March.
Mistake 6: Criticised preventive measures
Following the WHO’s advice, the European
Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) suggested that the probability
of the virus infecting the EU was low, likely delaying more robust border
controls by European states.
As the virus continued spreading across
Europe and reached America, WHO recommended that the travel industry maintain
the status quo. Dr. Tedros said on 3rd February: ‘There is
no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel
and trade.’
Mistake 7: Didn’t learn from mistakes
Indeed, the WHO’s response to Ebola was
similarly criticised by the international community. This is not a first in
WHO’s history. In the 1950s and 60s, WHO found itself manoeuvring between the
Soviet-led Communist bloc and the US.
Mistake 8: Colluding with China
The first cases of the Wuhan virus were seen
as early as November but the Chinese government silenced the whistleblowers and
downplayed the threat. Dr. Lee Wenliang is one of those whistleblowers who died
as a hero trying to sound the alarm of coronavirus weeks before he contracted
the illness himself and died. The CNN news headline on 11th February
was: ‘China’s hero doctor was punished for telling truth about coronavirus.’
During such testing times, the WHO only
continued to please the authoritarian government of China. It praised China for
releasing the virus’s genome while neglecting to mention that it took them at
least 17 days to do so.
China also did not report human-to-human
transmission until late January, even though Chinese doctors suspected the same
at least a month earlier. WHO scientists weren’t allowed into Wuhan until three
weeks after the outbreak first came to light. While all of this happened, Dr.
Tedros continued to glorify the all-powerful regime by saying, ‘We would have
seen many more cases outside China by now if it were not for the government’s
efforts to protect their own people and the people of the world. The Chinese
government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken
to contain the outbreak’.
There is nothing hidden about China’s
efforts at undermining international organisations. Its growing clout in
international organisations is creating new fault lines in global politics and
the WHO has been an early victim. Remember, the WHO, led by Margret Chan in
2013 was one of the first international institutions to have signed an MoU with
China to advance health priorities under the Belt and Road Initiative.
China has not only attempted to censor all
official accounts of its early failings but has also employed an overt global
disinformation campaign, trying to pinpoint the source of the outbreak as the
US or Europe.
It is an irony of our times that the world’s
most potent authoritarian state (China) heads over a quarter of all specialised
agencies in the UN, ostensibly the centrepiece of the international liberal
order.
Mistake 9: Personal interest
Dr. Tedros, an Ethiopian politician, was
also seen as a China-backed candidate in 2017 for the Director-General’s
election. The ex-Health Minister of Ethiopia has favoured China in innumerable
ways which may be due to China having made a lot of investments in Ethiopia
under the One Belt One Road initiative and because Ethiopia does not want to
anger the red dragon. Dr. Tedros could also be favouring China because of these
reasons. In late January, he visited China and on 28th January he
met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Following the meeting, he commended
China for ‘setting a new standard for outbreak control’ and praised the
country’s top leadership for its ‘openness to sharing information’ with the WHO
and other countries.
Dr. Tedros said on 5th February
that ‘China took action massively at the epicentre and that helped in
preventing cases from being exported’.
Mistake 10: Political background
Dr. Tedros’ inaction stands in stark
contrast to the WHO’s actions during the 2003 SARS outbreak in China.
The then WHO Director-General, Dr. Gro
Harlem Brundtland, who had been the Prime Minister of Norway twice, made
history by declaring the WHO’s first travel advisory in 55 years which
recommended against travel to and from the disease epicentre in southern China.
Dr. Brundtland also criticised China for endangering global health by
attempting to cover up the outbreak through its usual playbook of arresting
whistleblowers and censoring the media. It is said that Dr. Tedros is not from
a political background, hence he is unable to face China bluntly and blame it
for the coronavirus.
Mistake 11: Funding
WHO has
required voluntary budgetary contributions to meet its broad mandate. In recent
years, it has grown more reliant upon these funds to address its budget
deficits.
This dependence on voluntary contributions
leaves WHO highly susceptible to the influence of individual countries or
organisations. China’s WHO contributions have grown by 52% since 2014 to
approximately $86 million.
CONCLUSION
It is an open secret among international
diplomats and public health experts that WHO is ‘not fit for its mission’,
riddled as it is with politics and bureaucracy. Given its previous failures and
the warning that was SARS, its leadership has no excuse for reacting in such a
sluggish and indifferent manner.
A global
pandemic does not occur every time a novel infectious pathogen emerges. It does
when there is an absence of accurate information about the pathogen and a
failure of basic public services – in this case, the failure to regulate food
and marketplaces to prevent the transmission of pathogens and the failure to
shut down transportation and control movement once it spreads. When authorities
regulate public health, share information about a pathogen and co-operate to
control its movement, diseases are contained and pandemics are unlikely to
occur.
The collateral price that the world has paid
for this lesson is perhaps too exorbitant. Hopefully, we will take a leaf from
this book and have better, more accountable and robust structures in place for
such pathogens that threaten all life on our planet.
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* The above article was chosen as the
best article from over 50 entries submitted at
‘Tarang 2020’, the 13th Jal Erach CA Students’ Annual Day organised
by the BCAS. One of the features of this year’s event was ‘Writopedia’.
Indian Firm made the world’s first cruelty free soap;
got Rabindranath THakur to model for it
The first rule of every manufacturing company is to
keep its process a secret. But Godrej brothers did the opposite and distributed
pamphlets in Gujarati that explained the process of making soaps from vegetable
oils. Did it establish trust and appealed a larger audience? You bet.
Rabindranath Thakur sits in his quintessential calm
position in a photo, hands obediently placed on his laps as he stares into the
abyss. Next to his portrait is a quote that reads, “I know of no foreign soaps
better than Godrej’s and I will make a point of using it.”
Yes, as hard as it may seem to believe, the Nobel
Laureate had agreed to endorse a toilet soap in the early 1920s. Not just him,
other freedom fighters like Annie Besant and C. Rajagopalachari also followed
suit and marketed the ‘Godrej No. 1’ soap.
The aim was to promote the first made-in-India and
cruelty-free soap and further strengthen India’s freedom struggle movement, and
the leaders made their political statements by requesting people to cripple the
economy of colonisers by boycotting foreign goods and instead opting for
something that is ‘for Indians, and by Indians’.
Ardeshir Godrej, a businessman by profession and patriot
at heart, is the man behind starting this humble swadeshi brand in 1897. His
younger brother Pirojsha also joined the business and together they came to be
known as the Godrej Brothers.
Fast forward to 2020, a 122-year-old consumer-goods
giant, the Godrej Group controls $4.7 billion revenue. It comprises five major
companies with interests in real estate, FMCG, agriculture, chemicals and
gourmet retail.
Godrej has not only been an undying witness to India’s
rapid development but has also paved way for many ‘firsts’ in India including
springless lock, Prima typewriter, ballot box and refrigerators.
(Better India, August 7, 2020)
