The Council of Europe led by its health committee chairman Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg made a strong attack on World Health Organisaton last month for declaring swine flu outbreak a pandemic and thereby making a worldwide scare. The Council charged that scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards, were influenced by leading MNCs to exaggerate situations over pandemics like H1N1 with the motive of promoting their patented drugs. This had led to squandering of tight healthcare resources of countries for inefficient vaccine strategies and exposed millions of healthy people to the risk of unknown side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines, a resolution passed by the Council said. The atmosphere of panic thus created led to governments stockpiling the anti-flu drug, Tamiflu, and granting huge contracts for millions of doses of vaccine to the global pharma companies. The resolution passed by Dr. Wodarg also sought investigation into the role of drug firms in the whole episode. GSK is one of the leading makers of anti-flu drugs and vaccines and is stated to be a major beneficiary of this pandemic scare. The charges made at the most respected world healthcare body are indeed serious and to an extend dented its credibility among the world nations. WHO has, however, denied the allegations that the agency was influenced by the pharma industry and overstated the swine flue pandemic.
India has taken a very righteous approach to the false pandemic alert of WHO along with other member nations and urged the world body to explain the media reports in this regard. India's health secretary called for greater transparency of the terms and conditions on which international vaccine manufacturers supply vaccines to various countries. WHO needs to formally announce the factual position with regard to H1N1 pandemic to dispense all misunderstandings created by it among the countries. What is to be kept in mind in the wake of this false alarm is the possibility of recurrence of such alerts and recommendations by international health organizations at the instance of pharmaceutical lobby. Pharmaceutical giants are facing a serious crisis today as their research laboratories are not able to find new and efficient drugs for the last some years .At the same time most of their blockbuster drugs are facing patent expiries in the next couple of years. In a situation like this, drug firms are turning desperate to push up sales by adopting all kinds of unethical means. Launching of cervical cancer vaccine in several countries including India by two global giants is a case worth noting.. Although some of the top medical experts questioned the efficacy and safety of this vaccine, the companies have been successful in getting marketing approvals for its use on young girls in many countries.