WHO panel to review swine flu response over next year (Roundup)

Apr 14, 2010, 18:43 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.

Next month, however, the first indications of the direction of the process would come to light when the external committee reviewing the WHO would submit an interim report.

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

'The spirit is not to point a figure at wrongdoers,' Harvey Fineberg, chairman of the panel, told reporters in Geneva after the committee concluded its first ever three-day meeting.

'Our goals is to identify lessons that will help in the future,' said Fineberg, who heads Washington's Institute of Medicine.

The 29 experts on the committee would be looking into the legally binding International Health Regulations - drawn up in 2005- and investigate how they worked in regards to the H1N1 pandemic.

This would include critical looks at issues of how the pandemic was characterized and how the alert system worked, Fineberg said.

'We want to hear from informed critics,' the US scientist said, calling for an open review.

Also, the experts would check the causes for the confusion that resulted in the first months of the outbreak, including how the WHO's public communications worked.

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.

'What is evident from the discussions we've had in the past few days is that the committee will have to come to grips with place of severity in pandemics,' Fineberg admitted, but said it was a 'difficult problem.'

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

The use of the word 'external' for the current panel, 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.

It has to date been responsible for over 17,500 deaths, though seasonal flu is estimate to kill over a quarter million people each year.