Brawl At The World Health Organization Over Criteria For Pandemic Declaration

May 27, 2009 (LPAC)--Smell a British rat? In a conference call today from Geneva, the World Health Organization's interim Assistant Director, Keijii Fukuda, defended the decision not to declare a swine flu pandemic, arguing that this might cause "cynicism and panic."

Fukuda's remarks came just two days after the WHO announced that it would re-evaluate the criteria used to declare a pandemic. According to MSNBC, that announcement represented the WHO's "caving in" to enormous pressure exerted by "some of its member countries not to announce a pandemic."

Some of its member countries? Let's get specific. On May 18, at the opening session of the WHO's annual meeting, Britain's Health Minister charged in to demand a change in the WHO's criteria for declaring a pandemic. Aside from looking at regional activity of the disease, and transmission patterns, he demanded that other factors, such as severity, be taken into account. The line now circulating, is, that since the AH1N1 virus is "mild," it would be jumping the gun to declare a pandemic.

Fukuda's hemming and hawing over "what kind of adjustments must be made to make sure that the definitions really [reflect] the situation," is a direct response to the British thuggery. The official said WHO would be consulting several experts over the next few weeks--weeks?--to help rewrite the agency's pandemic criteria.

The current requirements for declaring a pandemic refer only to the spread of the new flu virus, not its severity. Fukuda limply asserted that countries "are already doing things necessary right now to address the situation," implying that nothing would change were a pandemic to be declared. If criteria are applied "in the wrong way, it may not help us," he added. "It may create more difficulties."