WHO panel to review swine flu response over next year

Apr 14, 2010, 18:24 GMT

Geneva - A review of the World Health Organization's response to the swine flu outbreak will likely be completed in May next year, the head of the committee said Wednesday.

The external committee reviewing the WHO would submit an interim report this May with an aim to have a final document ready in 13 months, Harvey Fineberg, chairman of the pan told reporters in Geneva.

Each May, the WHO holds its World Health Assembly, the principle meeting of the UN's health agency.

Fineberg, who heads Washington's Institute of Medicine, was chosen to chair the panel on the international response to the A(H1N1) when it convened on Monday for its first ever three-day meeting.

He said the 29 experts on the committee would be looking into issues of how the pandemic was characterized and how the alert system worked.

Also, the experts would review the confusion that resulted in the first months of the outbreak.

WHO chief Margaret Chan said on Monday she wants a 'a frank, critical, transparent, credible and independent review.'

There has some sharp criticism of the WHO over its handling of the pandemic.

Many questions have been raised about the panic caused by the virus, which turned out to be mild in nature and infected fewer people than had been predicted by the WHO in early estimates.

WHO officials have said they needed to sound alarm bells when the A(H1N1) virus started to spread, as no one could know at the time how the pandemic would turn out.

Severity, one official said, could only be properly judged retroactively.

Questions have also been raised about vaccines and the ties of some WHO advisers to the pharmaceutical industry.

The use of the word 'external,' Fineberg said, meant that no member of the review committee was receiving a salary from the WHO or had other financial conflicts of interest.

The H1N1 virus was first announced in April last year and is generally believed to have begun spreading in March in Mexico and the United States. The WHO declared the influenza a pandemic in June.