Critique of the WHO pandemic response is now out

We blogged early and often about the H1N1 pandemic, including posts about the controversy surrounding the WHO response and whether there was any industry influence at play. An independent expert panel has now released a draft report on the 2009 H1N1 response. Here are the media summaries from the NY Times, Science Magazine, and the Nature blog The Great Beyond.

Regarding the industry conflict-of-interest (COI) issue, the report takes WHO to task for poor handling of COI and lack of transparency, but concludes that there is "no evidence of attempted or actual influence by commercial interests on advice given to or decisions made by WHO." I’m not sure what such evidence would be required…direct cash payments to members of the WHO advisory committee? Anyway, given that the panel felt that WHO waited too long to call the pandemic, it is unlikely they’d conclude that this decision was driven by industry COI.

Read the report yourself—now that Iowa has thawed out and the sun has appeared, I have no time to detail all 15 of the recommendations the panel made.