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The World Health Organization (WHO) is caught up in yet another scandal following a Council of Europe investigation into whether health experts raised the “scare” level for the H1N1/ Swine Flu virus last year. The allegations were presented at a hearing in Strasbourg from January 25-29. The Council suggests the WHO Emergency Committee, which has been at the center of this recent debacle, had insider interest to help boost sales for pharmaceutical companies including Novartis, Cadila and BioSante–to name a few.

The names of the 18-member WHO Emergency Committee that act as advisers on the swine flu are closely being kept secret by the organization. It is alleged by Council of Europe investigators, specifically Dr. Wodarg, Honorary Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe– the WHO, by upgrading the status of the flu to a pandemic, has been directly involved in boosting multi-billion dollar business deals for pharmaceutical companies that have links to its members. 

Since the virus was upgraded to a pandemic on the 11th of June in 2009, pharmaceutical companies have sold billions of dollars worth of vaccines worldwide.

“The WHO basically held the trigger for the implementation of the pandemic preparedness plans and with this for high revenues for the involved producers of pandemic vaccines and some antiviral drugs. The WHO by its decision to announce the pandemic therefore had a key role to play. By its announcement, it also decided on expenditures to be made from national budgets worldwide, which, according to analysts, amount to 18 billion USD. This is a lot of money which could have been used for many other health issues. The pharmaceutical companies must have been waiting for this announcement, which was made even though the flu was relatively mild,” said Dr. Wodarg in his statement to the Council last week.

TRNS spoke with Gregory Hartl via telephone in Geneva this morning for the WHO response. Mr. Hartl emphasized:

“The Emergency Committee on influenza may have at one time or another, acted as advisers to a pharmaceutical company. The advisers must fill out a declaration of interest which is then vetted by the WHO Secretariat. A decision is then taken as to whether or not there is a conflict of interest. If we want to go back to the issue–you have to ask the right question: Has there been any undue influence exercised on the WHO? The answer is no.”

WHO also has a statement on its website in response to allegations of staging a fake pandemic:

“WHO took decisive actions in accordance with the International Health Regulations but did not announce the start of a pandemic until 11 June 2009 when the updated pandemic criteria were met. The new virus spread with unprecedented speed, reaching 120 countries and territories in about 8 weeks, and now has been reported from virtually all countries.”

Dr. Keiji Fukuda on behalf of WHO, reiterated a similar message at the Council of Europe hearing: ” Let me state clearly for the record. The influenza pandemic policies and responses recommended and taken by WHO were not improperly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. And then later : “The world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible.”

Wodarg and the Council of Europe investigative committee vehemently disagree.

“…We can see that the WHO undertook an incomprehensible action, which up to now was never justified by any scientific evidence. WHO ‘gambled away’ public confidence. It does therefore seem right that we investigate this matter within the Council of Europe to find out how the WHO could undertake such risky action in spite of lots of warning and protesting voices from scientists and national Governments. It did so in the case of the avian flu and again for the swine flu,” added Wodarg.

Wodarg was among a slew of other signatories from the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Sweden who motioned for an investigation in a declaration entitled: Faked Pandemics: A Threat for Health, which calls for an end to private sector exploitation of illness: “In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies have influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards, to alarm governments worldwide. They have made them squander tight health care resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly exposed millions of healthy people to the risk of unknown side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.”

At the end of 2009, WHO estimated worldwide more than 414,000 laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 and nearly 5000 deaths.