[A2k] Divide and rule at the WHO?

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/05/21/divide-et-impera/

Divide and rule at the WHO?
By thiru, on May 21st, 2009

Thursday, 21 May 2009

Delegates at the World Health Assembly will have to grapple with how
best to deploy their delegations to simultaneously cover pandemic
influenza and resolving the outstanding elements of the WHO IGWG Plan
of Action.

Today=92s WHO Journal lists the following morning schedule for Committee
A.

Item 11 (continued) Medium-strategic plan, including Proposed
Programme budget 2010-2011

To consider appropriation resolution for financial period 2010-2011

Item 12 (continued) Technical and health matters

Item 12.1 (continued) Pandemic influenza preparedness: sharing of
influenza viruses and access to vaccines and other benefits

At the same time, Committee B will be considering commence with
considering a draft report of Committee B containing resolutions on
mainly budgetary and administrative matters and one item on the
=93Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including
east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan=94.

Immediately after, the first technical item discussed in the morning
session of Committee B is Item 12.8 on =93Public health, innovation and
intellectual property; global strategy and plan of action.=94 Today is
when member countries at the World Health Assembly decide whether they
are serious about the commitments they negotiated the WHO Global
Strategy item on action item 2.3(c) namely, to =93encourage further
exploratory discussions on the utility of possible instruments or
mechanisms for essential health and biomedical R&D, including inter
alia, an essential health and biomedical R&D treaty=94. As noted by my
colleague Judit Rius Sanjuan, many fear that if the WHO is removed as
an implementing stakeholder for this action point, the =93WHO would not
have the capacity to be the forum for interested governments to start
these important and urgent discussions=94.

The parallel committees negotiating the contentious pandemic influenza
issue on the one hand (Committee A-Room XVIII) and the WHO IGWG Plan
of Action on the other (Committee B-Room XVII) suggests the forces of
divede et impera at play at the World Health Organization.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
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