Bangkok Post - November 24, 2004
Doug Bandow**

For the WHO, politics was more important than health. Taipei is not a member of the WHO because most nations, including the United States, formally consider it to be part of China. And China objected to any WHO teams travelling to Taiwan.

With no thanks to the WHO or Beijing, Taiwan avoided a disastrous outbreak.

Unfortunately, like most United Nations agencies, the WHO's activities have long been captive to a highly political agenda. For instance, earlier this year the organisation claimed that a third of childhood deaths in Europe resulted from environmental causes.

It is a preposterous assertion. European analysts Jaap Hanekamp and Julian Morris observe: "Few of these deaths were actually caused by problems generally associated with 'the environment'. Out of 100,000 total deaths, 75,000 were caused by accidents." The rest, most in poorer countries such as Russia and Turkey, largely resulted from problems like malaria, poor sanitation and dirty water.

But the facts did not stop the WHO. It was particularly upset about the presumed threat of global warming, which, it claimed, would result in "more widespread and severe" deaths.

Yet, Mr Hanekamp and Mr Morris archly observe: "No scientific evidence was offered to support these claims - perhaps because none exists."

Nevertheless, the WHO is advancing its Children's Environment and Health Action Plan for Europe which proposes more regulations over technology, such as fossil fuels, pesticides and plastics. The result would make us all poorer, yet wealthier societies are better able to prevent and treat illness.

For instance, the pesticide DDT is one of the most effective means to kill mosquitoes, which spread malaria. Important medical devices are made from plastics.

The WHO is ignoring problems that today kill millions while fretting over worst-case scenarios for the future that are unlikely ever to occur. Simply providing clean water and improving sanitation would do more to help Third World people than would most of the WHO's highly-publicised initiatives.

The organisation has advanced the "Roll Back Malaria" programme, along with Unicef, the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development. Unlike global warming, malaria does kill. Yet the WHO has been distributing two drugs which are no longer effective in Africa.

Moreover, complain Robert Bate and Richard Tren, respectively a British and a South African health-care analyst: "Roll Back Malaria partners are unwilling to fund interventions that work but upset environmentalists, such as indoor insecticide spraying."

It was widespread outdoor use of DDT years ago that had adverse environmental consequences; poor nations throughout Africa and South Asia are begging for assistance to undertake carefully targeted use indoors.

It's hard to know if anyone died because the WHO kowtowed to Beijing rather than cooperate with Taipei. But failing to fund effective anti-malaria measures does kill.

Equally important, organisation missteps involving the treatment of Aids have harmed untold numbers of poor people in poor countries. The WHO actually has impeded the distribution of effective medications.

Treating Aids is one of the organisation's primary responsibilities. Yet earlier this year the WHO was forced to remove foreign copies of patented Aids drugs by the Indian firms Cipla and Ranbaxy from its list of pre-qualified medicines. In November Ranbaxy pulled its remaining seven antivirals from the WHO programme.

As millions have suffered and died of HIV/Aids, political activists worldwide have attacked the drug-makers. Yet without research-driven pharmaceutical companies, we would still live in the pre-1987 world when there was no treatment for Aids and the diagnosis was a death sentence.

Rather than pay for innovative new drugs, the WHO has promoted foreign knock-offs. Alas, the copies could not be certified as biologically equivalent or safe.

Thus, the WHO has endangered the very people it was supposed to be helping. The inadequate drugs risked encouraging the Aids virus to mutate into strains resistant to all medicines. Moreover, diverting treatment dollars into inferior pharmaceuticals reduced the financial incentive for drug companies to develop newer and better products.

It is an appalling record, one of "bad decisions, missed deadlines and bogus Aids drugs", complained Waldemar Ingdahl, director of Eudoxa, a Swedish think tank: "Africans and the poor should not be treated with bad medicine."

The WHO has gone badly astray. Director-General Lee Jong-wook, chosen less than a year ago, must put good health before bad politics. Only then will the WHO live up to its promise, promoting health rather than harm.

** Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC. He was a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and is the author and editor of several books.

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