Following a Council of Europe investigation the World Health Organisation is under scrutiny as to whether health experts created a ’scare’ last year because of the H1N1 virus outbreak which has not produced the mass mortality rates that were predicted.

The Council has been suggesting that the WHO Emergency Committee had insider interest to help boost sales for pharmaceutical companies including Novartis, Cadila and BioSante as well as maybe some others. Between the time that the WHO declared a pandemic on June 11th 2009, these pharmaceutical companies have sold billions of dollars worth of vaccines.

This attack on the WHO, by in particular Dr. Wodarg, Honorary Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, could be accurate or could be misplaced, it is hard to tell as an outsider.

However, had the mortality rates been as predicted and the vaccines were not commissioned a quite different investigation would be undertaken now…

Whatever the outcome, the fact is that even if the pandemic was not as bad as first feared, the response was right to take it seriously. Not even health and pandemic professionals can predict how badly a new virus can affect a global population, and as we saw, the spread of the infection was extremely rapid thanks to our modern, pan-global transport system.

It is easy to point the finger of blame at the pharma company profits and therefore the WHO’s involvement, but if it puts people into a false sense of comfort or complacency the next time a pandemic arises, will people be so prepared to take precautions and take appropriate steps to ensure business continuity?