CLICK HERE for an Italian article in Il Manifesto, Tanto zucchero please, siamo italiani about the controversy surrounding WHO’s Sugar Guidelines and the Conflicts of Interest on the Italian Delegation.
Tanto zucchero please, siamo italiani
CLICK HERE for a new BMJ article about the issues around the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) just posted piece on the BMJ website interesting:
http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5457/rr
IBFAN and other NGO Statements during the WHO discussions in Geneva are now posted directly on to WHO’s website. CLICK HERE
CLICK HERE for all the WHO documents
Click here for our Press Release (see picture) on the IBFAN/PSI/HiP intervention on Ebola and the risk of commercial exploitation. OXFAM, MSF, Save the Children and others also made interventions during the Special Session on Ebola on Sunday, 25th January.
Tuesday – 27th January – during the debate on WHO’s Framework for Engagement with Non State Actors took place – the majority of Member States, including South Africa (for the whole Africa region) , India, Nepal, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand and many other developing countries, calling for strengthening of this very flawed draft set of policies, especially in relation to safeguards on Conflicts of Interest. In contrast the industrialised rich nations, USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia and others, would have been happy to adopt the document straight away and review it after a couple of years. Lida Lhotska’s intervention for IBFAN stressed the need for an expert consultation on conflicts of interest because of the persistent misconception of COI theory that permeates through the entire set of policies.(also pasted below) A decision proposed by Argentina and discussed at by a draft group was adopted has been adopted requesting the Director General to:
(1) compile these proposals and to make them available to Member States by 9 March 2015;
(2) convene an open-ended intergovernmental meeting from 30 March to 1 April 2015 with a view to discussing the textual proposals submitted by Member States;
(3) submit, based on the outcome of the above intergovernmental meeting, a revised version of the Framework of Engagement with non-State actors to the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly through the Programme, Budget and Administration Committee.
The decision contains a NON-EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF ISSUES WHICH SEEM TO NEED MORE WORK AMONGST MEMBER STATES
The discussions on NCDs started on Saturday 31st – with the much controversy about WHO’s Sugar Guidelines. The opposition by Italy, the USA and others highlighted everything we had been saying about the need to protect WHO’s norm setting function from commercial influence.
My intervention for IBFAN on the Update on the Commission for Ending Childhood Obesity is HERE and pasted below.
CLICK HERE or ILSIB136_40-en for the Report on the Standing Committee on Non Governmental Organisations
Paragraph 9 explains that they decided to exclude ILSI over lack of transparency over its links to tobacco. This illustrates the importance of the whistleblower/watchdog role.
9. At the request of a Committee member, the Committee then discussed the relations with International Life Sciences Institute. Although the collaboration itself had proved beneficial and the plan for collaboration for the next collaboration period had been agreed upon, the Committee was concerned that a member company of one of the Institute’s branches was reportedly owned by a company that manufactures and sells tobacco. It was brought to the attention of the Committee that the Institute had informed the Secretariat on 19 January 2015 that the International Life Sciences Institute Board of Trustees had unanimously amended its bylaws on 17 January 2015 to state that the Institute will not allow companies or affiliates of companies that manufacture, produce, market, sell or distribute tobacco products. The International Life Sciences Institute explained that this meant that the company referred to will no longer be able to be a member. The Committee noted this information but it indicated that in its view, given that the amendment of the bylaws had been made only very recently, following the publication of document EB136/NGO/WP/1, the Institute had not been fully transparent in its relations with WHO. The Committee also noted that the amendment to the bylaws had been made only a few days earlier, and no further evidence of their actual implementation was made available; thus, it was not possible to verify that the necessary change had been implemented. Based on these concerns, the Committee decided to recommend that official relations be discontinued with the International Life Sciences Institute
Climate Change and indicators for the WHO Targets on Maternal and Infant and Young Child Nutrition will come up on Monday 2nd February.