The World Health Organization, which has been criticized for its management of the neocrown crisis, pledged Thursday to give full access to all information on the neocrown virus to an international commission of inquiry. Clark, one of the co-chairmen of the International Independent Investigation Commission, was in Geneva on Thursday to announce the names of 11 international health experts and politicians who will serve on the commission of inquiry. For more information, listen to Andre’s presentation at.
In May, WHO member states agreed in principle to conduct an independent investigation and assessment of the neocrowning crisis. In early July, WHO Secretary General Tan Desai announced that former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf would co-chair an independent international commission of inquiry into the neocrown crisis. Since then, 120 health experts from around the world have submitted applications to serve on the Commission.
On Thursday, after a rigorous selection process, the PIC announced the names of 11 internationals selected for the commission, including French AIDS expert Michel Kazatchkine and former British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, as well as former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo; Liao Man-sheung, former president of Doctors Without Borders and a vocal critic of the WHO’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa; Mauricio Cárdenas, former Colombian Minister of Economy; Mark Dibble, an American who served as executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; and Chinese health expert Zhong Nanshan.
Clark, one of the co-chairs of the independent commission of inquiry, told a press conference Thursday that the WHO has made it clear that it will provide investigators with access to all relevant information in its possession and will ensure that any documents, information and reports requested by investigators will be made available by the WHO.
The committee of experts is scheduled to submit its first interim report in October and its final report in May of next year. The mission of the commission of inquiry is to assess the response of member states and WHO to the new coronavirus in the hope that lessons can be learned to prepare for the next global outbreak.
More than 863,000 people worldwide have now died from the new coronavirus since China acknowledged its discovery last December. Since the onset of the new coronavirus crisis, WHO has been sharply criticized for its failure to provide timely measures and its ambivalence on the issue of whether or not to wear masks, as well as its contradictory interpretations of how the new coronavirus is transmitted.
In particular, the U.S. accused WHO of delaying until January 30 to declare the neo-crowning epidemic a global health emergency in order to curry favor with China, which had officially discovered the existence of the virus in late December. French experts also told AFP in April that there was no denying that WHO had accommodated China, as evidenced by its high praise for the way it managed the neo-crown epidemic at the time.
The U.S., the WHO’s primary funder, formally began the process of withdrawing from the WHO in July after accusing it of being a “puppet” of China.
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