The handling of the H1N1 pandemic by the World Health Organisation, EU agencies and national governments led to a “waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public”, according to a report drafted and made public this week by the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

The report, prepared by Paul Flynn (United Kingdom, SOC) and approved on Friday by the committee ahead of a plenary debate at the end of this month, says there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by the WHO”, resulting in a distortion of public health priorities.

Presenting his report, Mr Flynn told the committee “this was a pandemic that never really was”, and described the vaccination programme as “placebo medicine on a large scale”.

Malta’s overall swine flu campaign cost between €2.5 and €3 million, including the cost of the vaccines themselves, as well as the media campaign to encourage people to be inoculated.

Some money had been saved when the government, on realising that less than half the population was interested in having the jab, amended the original contract with GSK to reduce the number of doses that were brought in by 83,500. No penalties were paid.

By the time the campaign ended, in early March, only 92,020 people had been

inoculated, 23 per cent of the population.

In the text adopted this week, the committee identifies what it calls “grave shortcomings” in the transparency of decision-making about the outbreak, generating concerns about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on decisions taken. Plummeting confidence in such advice could prove “disastrous” in the case of a severe future pandemic, it warns.

In particular, the WHO and European health institutions were not willing to publish the names and declarations of interest of the members of the WHO Emergency Committee and relevant European advisory bodies directly involved in recommendations concerning the pandemic, the parliamentarians point out.

However, attending the meeting was Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, who told parliamentarians that, according to an investigation by her journal, drug companies that stood to

profit had previously paid scientists who drew up key WHO guidelines on stock-

piling flu vaccines.

The WHO has been “highly defensive”, the committee said, and unwilling to accept that a change in the definition of a pandemic should be made, or to revise its prognosis of the Swine Flu outbreak.

The committee sets out a series of urgent recommendations for greater transparency and better governance in public health, as well as safeguards against what it calls “undue influence by vested interests”. It also calls for a public fund to support independent research, trials and expert advice, possibly financed by an obligatory contribution from the pharmaceutical industry, as well as closer collaboration with the media to avoid “sensationalism and scaremongering in the public health domain”.

The report is due to be debated by parliamentarians from all 47 Council of Europe member states on Thursday, 24 June during PACE’s summer session in Strasbourg.

European parliamentarians

call for investigation

In a tandem development last month, more than 200 European parliamentarians called for the establishment of a European Parliamentary committee to investigate the handling of the H1N1 flu pandemic.

Members of five political groups – the Greens, Socialists, Liberals, European People’s Party and European Conservatives and Reformists – signed a petition lobbying the EU assembly’s Conference of Presidents to establish the new committee.

The acceptance of World Health Organisation advice by the EU is likely to be at the centre of any probe, as was the case when the Council of Europe launched an investigation into the handling of the flu outbreak.

Many governments have been left with excess stocks of vaccines and antiviral medicines worth millions of euros, after the expected wave of infections failed to materialise, and critics claim the threat from the virus was oversold.

The debate has divided experts between those who believe it was better to err on the side of safety, and those who say health resources could have been better spent.

MEPs also want to investigate the role of the European Medicines Agency and the European Centre for Prevention and Disease Control, to see how decisions were taken.

They are particularly worried by the impact the pandemic will have on public confidence in experts.

French Green MEP Michèle Rivasi said MEPs want to probe whether the experts advising the EU institutions were too close to the pharmaceutical industry.  

A committee could also look at the feasibility of a common European approach for buying and distributing vaccines across the EU – something that was lacking during last year’s outbreak.