Highlights:
- Pandemic Treaty Update
- WHO advances its power grab mission
- Why the USA withdrew from the WHO? Lessons for India
- Flogging a dead horse – media fans fears around Covid-19 surge in Singapore, Thailand and HongKong
- Indian media takes up to bring Covid-19 back into the news
Universal Health Organisation (UHO) Weekly Newsletter – 23 May 2025
Download: https://uho.org.in/nl/2025-05-23-newsletter.pdf
Website: https://uho.org.in
Dr. Amitabh Banerjee, the chairman of UHO: I will read and explain the newsletter dated May 23, 2025. There are some very important issues to discuss.
The first major issue on everyone’s mind is the status of the WHO pandemic agreement. On the 20th, the WHO pandemic treaty—also known as the WHO pandemic agreement—and proposed changes to the International Health Regulations were discussed. These changes aim to ensure that whenever WHO declares a pandemic, strict actions will be taken from the very beginning. Some decisions have been made on this, and we will talk about them in detail.
The second important issue is that the USA has separated from the WHO. The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., gave a speech at the WHO Health Assembly, directly addressing the ongoing World Health Assembly meeting online. He clearly stated why America has left the WHO and highlighted several concerns. We will share those concerns, which are significant enough for other countries to reconsider whether they want to stay aligned with the WHO. If no country sides with those concerns, it means they do not want transparency because WHO is currently plagued by conflicts of interest, pharmaceutical control, and influence from China. The biggest issue is China’s strong influence over WHO, which will only increase now that the USA has left.
The third issue is also important for all of you. You might have seen on TV that COVID is supposedly returning. We will discuss whether COVID is truly coming back and whether the public should be so alarmed or whether the media is overhyping the situation. We will focus on these three issues.
Let’s start with the update on the WHO pandemic treaty. WHO has taken a step forward in its power framework. On June 20, it was announced that over 150 countries have reached a consensus to support the pandemic agreement. Some countries did not vote or agree, but the majority have accepted it. As mentioned, the USA has already separated and is loudly protesting, while WHO officials are celebrating. However, this celebration is somewhat premature because no formal signatures have yet been made, and we will explain why.
The agreement is the result of three years of hard work and intense negotiation. According to WHO’s website statement, they identified gaps and inequities in the national and global response to COVID-19. WHO acknowledges that there were significant shortcomings in how governments and WHO itself responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. These gaps mainly relate to unequal access to vaccines and pharmaceuticals across countries, which WHO laments and wants to address with the treaty to ensure equitable distribution.
Our comment from UHO is that if WHO wants to implement international health regulations to fix these issues, it must first conduct a full audit, analysis, and criticism of the previous shortcomings. Everyone knows the measures taken were ineffective and unscientific. Lockdowns, for example, did not stop the virus; the virus spread from China to Chandni Chowk regardless. Respiratory viruses cannot be stopped by lockdowns. Vaccines were developed with the expectation they would prevent transmission, but they did not. Vaccine efficacy dropped sharply within three to six months, and we are not even discussing side effects here. Masks were heavily promoted, but scientific studies from Bangladesh and elsewhere show masks do not stop viruses. Even high school students understand that cloth or surgical masks cannot contain the virus, and no one can wear them continuously for 24 hours. Social distancing also lacks scientific evidence, as admitted by military officials during senior hearings—they confessed it was all made up. These are the shortcomings.
The new treaty does not separate these shortcomings from the amendments to the International Health Regulations, which contain over 300 amendments in a 90-page document. The regulations have been tightened even further, continuing with measures that never worked. WHO now suggests these early measures would have been better if implemented sooner. That is their stance.
The second point from the agreement, as stated on their website, is that there will be global collaboration to ensure a stronger and more equitable distribution of resources during future pandemics. They argue that African countries were left behind during COVID-19 because they did not get enough vaccines. However, the statistics show that Africa had the lowest vaccination coverage—only about 5-10%—because developed Western countries hoarded vaccines, taking multiple booster doses themselves. Despite this, COVID cases and deaths were lowest in Africa.
So, Africa’s lower vaccination rates did not translate to worse outcomes. The real issue is that WHO is focusing only on equitable vaccine and drug distribution, but health is not just about vaccines. Vaccines become necessary only when health systems fail. Africa is currently facing outbreaks of monkeypox, malaria, and cholera because of poor living standards, malnutrition, and sanitation issues, which are also prevalent in Asian countries. If WHO truly cares about health, it should address water supply, nutrition, sanitation, living standards, and housing equally across East, West, Africa, America, and Asia. That is what equitable distribution should mean.
Currently, WHO’s idea of equity is limited to equal distribution of vaccines and medicines, which is insufficient. They should first improve health conditions because poor sanitation and malnutrition lead to diseases and pandemics; only then should vaccines be distributed. For example, vaccines were sent for monkeypox, but it is unclear what became of those efforts. We will discuss that later.
Our position is that living conditions come first, and vaccines come last. Equitable distribution must be broader than just vaccines. Data from this pandemic shows that vaccines did not prevent waves or deaths. Countries with higher vaccination rates experienced second and third waves, while some African countries with low vaccination rates saw no such waves. South Africa, with higher vaccination coverage, had the highest cases and deaths in comparison to the rest of Africa. That is the second major issue.
The third issue, which has stalled negotiations, concerns the pandemic treaty’s provisions on pathogen access and benefit sharing. Countries are supposed to share any pathogens, viruses, or microbes they detect within their borders to facilitate vaccine, drug, and diagnostic development globally. However, a problem arose when it was discovered that a private American lab was sending samples of the Nipah virus from India to the US CDC without proper authorization. This is a security risk, and the government stopped it. But the treaty aims to institutionalize this sharing of pathogens so that all countries bring their viruses for collective benefit, much like sharing food brought from home to the office.
The benefits of this sharing are threefold: it supports vaccine development, drug development, and diagnostic improvements. This is the core idea behind pathogen access and benefit sharing, which is currently the biggest sticking point in treaty negotiations.
That concludes the update and analysis of the key issues surrounding the WHO pandemic treaty, the USA’s separation from WHO, and the concerns about a potential COVID resurgence.
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