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In January of this year the WHO (World Health Organization) announced it would conduct a review of how they handled their pandemic response
While an after-action review is normal and expected, this announcement came amid criticisms launched by the COE (Council of Europe), and recently echoed in the the BMJ, calling the pandemic declaration inappropriate and possibly driven by outside interests.
To fend off these attacks the WHO set up an expert panel in April to examine their actions.
Robert Roos, News Editor of CIDRAP has details of two members of the review panel who have decided to step down, citing concerns over their being an appearance of having conflicts of interest.
Two who helped WHO's pandemic response quit review panel
Robert Roos
News Editor
Jun 22, 2010 (CIDRAP News) – Two experts have resigned from the committee reviewing the World Health Organization's (WHO's) pandemic response because their involvement in the response itself may appear to compromise the independence of the review, the WHO said yesterday.
The two experts are Dr. John MacKenzie, an Australian virologist who chairs the WHO Emergency Committee, which has been advising the agency on its pandemic response, and Dr. Anthony Evans, chief of the aviation medicine section at the International Civil Aviation Association, based in Montreal.
"Two members have withdrawn from the committee due to their concerns that their close association with the work of WHO during the H1N1 pandemic could be perceived as inconsistent with the Committee's role in providing an independent evaluation of this work," the WHO said in an update on the pandemic review committee's work.
