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The World Health Organization (WHO) has been accused of being ‘colonialist’ over plans for a new pandemic treaty.
A coalition of Africa scientists fears that the agreement could see nations plunged into lockdown at the whim of the UN agency.
The WHO — heavily criticised for how it handled Covid — is considering up to 300 amendments to its legally-binding rulebook.
But one measure floated by the UN agency, the group worries, opens the door for member states to be made to comply with advice issued during future pandemics, such as enforcing vaccine passports and border closures.
The Pan-African Epidemic and Pandemic Working Group argued lockdowns were a ‘class-based and unscientific instrument’.
The World Health Organization (WHO) – heavily criticised for how it handled Covid – is considering up to 300 amendments to its legally-binding rulebook. But one measure floated by the UN agency, the group fears, opens the door for member states to be made to comply with any advice issued during future pandemics, such as enforcing vaccine passports and border closures
It comes as six MPs wrote to the Foreign Office in May last year demanding it blocks any new powers that could see the WHO dictate policy and budgets in the UK. Ex-Cabinet minister Esther McVey (pictured) warned the powers would see the organisation, described as China’s puppet by critics, move from a ‘member-led advisory body to a health authority with powers of compulsion’
It said they caused ‘significant harm’ to low-income nations.
Instead, African nations should be able to prioritise tackling their own major health needs, including diseases like cholera, yellow fever, malaria, the group said.
The coalition, which has backed shamed MP Andrew Bridgen for his work into Covid vaccine injuries, said the plans threaten ‘health sovereignty’ and ‘economic independence’.
Specifically, the group is calling for a review of the amended agreement, which empowers the WHO to declare a disease is a public health emergency of international concern, or a pandemic.
They said: ‘These new powers should not be considered.
‘Instead, an Africa sensitive approach should replace the increasingly colonialist approach of those who now control WHO’s agenda.
‘The lockdown regulations, which were imposed during Covid and which are still being reinforced in the draft instruments, were a class-based and unscientific instrument, causing significant collateral harm to lower-income people and useless for crowded informal settings as in urban parts of Africa.’
Reginald Oduor, senior lecturer at the department of philosophy, University of Nairobi, Kenya, added: ‘This is a perpetuation of classical western imperialism coming through the backdoor.
‘It is health imperialism to subjugate knowledge from other parts of the world and think medical innovations and knowledge about Covid or other pandemics have to come from Geneva or the developed countries.
‘This is the reason why we must advocate for multiple centres of knowledge… Every society has a right to have its own innovations.’
Under one draft of the treaty, countries would ‘follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health response’.
It aims to prepare for the next global health emergency and prevent a repeat of what South Africa termed the ‘vaccine apartheid’ — where countries had vastly unequal access to Covid vaccines and drugs.
The WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) group is set to agree on an amendments package to present to the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May at the 77th World Health Assembly.
It comes as six MPs wrote to the Foreign Office in May last year demanding it blocks any new powers that could see the WHO dictate policy and budgets in the UK.
Ex-Cabinet minister Esther McVey warned the powers would see the organisation, described as China’s puppet by critics, move from a ‘member-led advisory body to a health authority with powers of compulsion’.
In response to the fears, the Government insisted it ‘would never agree to anything that crosses our points of principle on sovereignty’.
The initial investigation by the WHO in January 2021, which saw a group of scientists travel to Wuhan, concluded that ‘all hypotheses remain on the table’. In its March 2021 report, it ranked the likelihood of four theories, ruling the natural origins theory to be the most likely. But it placed the lab leak an ‘extremely unlikely pathway’ behind the frozen food origin story. The theory the virus has been introduced via ‘cold food chain products’ – pushed by the Chinese Government – was deemed a ‘possible pathway’ instead by the UN agency
The Government also says the treaty ‘does not have any provisions’ for granting the WHO powers to impose lockdowns, mandatory quarantines or vaccines.
The agency has long been criticised for praising China‘s Covid response, for taking too long to call the outbreak an international emergency and for advising countries against imposing travel bans.
Its probe into the origins of Covid, in January 2021, which saw a group of scientists travel to Wuhan, concluded that ‘all hypotheses remain on the table’.
In its March 2021 report, it then ranked the likelihood of four popular theories, ruling the natural origins theory to be the most likely.
But it placed the lab leak as an ‘extremely unlikely pathway’ — behind the frozen food origin story.
Since then its director-general has called for a new inquiry, saying: ‘All hypotheses remain open and require further study.’
The lab leak theory, once dismissed as an outright conspiracy, has gained increasing traction in the years since the virus first caused a global pandemic.
But no concrete proof to support any origin argument has ever been found, leaving experts fearing the truth will never be uncovered.
