While there is a new article which is making rounds on internet and all the leading newspapers saying that WHO had nothing to do with the late information of the pandemic as China had made it extremely difficult for WHO to access the information and also china was reluctant to share all the information which WHO including the original genome sequence and the samples of the virus, well while we can give them the benefit of doubt in this particular case, but we cannot rule out the role of WHO in other cases like Ebola. When the world saw Ebola outbreak WHO quickly followed the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) which was to send a team of experts to the epicenter and collect the sample for further analysis of the outbreak, information, after all plays a crucial role in the fight against the pandemic and outbreaks, it is actually interesting to see how the same person has chose to act differently in two cases not so much apart, despite the fact that Ebola was from an African nation and the naming of the virus then was nonchalantly named after a river in Africa and when the time had it, the corona virus was smartly named as COVID-19 with a strong message from the Director of the WHO saying “no one shall call it as Wuhan virus as it creates stigma about the Chinese nationality, and to stop this prejudice and racism we hence name it COVID-19” my humble question to the organization is, out of the blue one day the director and the world’s finest health institute had an epiphany that there should be not stigma and from now on all the new viruses will not be named after the places of their discovery?, is this just a coincidence or is something weird going on? Well, even if we let it go (reluctantly,) giving the benefit of doubt, then we still have an unanswered question, which is Why was the SOP now followed in the case of China? IChinana treated specially by the WHO just because it is “alleged” to be a superpower?
Reluctantly, if these things are to be brushed under the carpet in garb of benefit of doubt then still there are tons of questions more that are waiting to be answered and they raise serious questions on the credibility of WHO and other trusted organizations which are considered as the standard deciders for poor nations whose health structure is not fully developed or underdeveloped for that matter of fact, what can countries like India do in this case when there are serious allegations on the World Health Organization, do we now need to wake-up and invest more in our health care? The long pending work of developing health infrastructure in India has now been taken up by the NDA led BJP government under the catchy schemes which act as universal health coverage for all Indian which is propounded as the real game-changer, which definitely it will be but what took the govt so long to announce such a scheme when many health care specialists have already written and in many cases done their research in this field, all the data was readily available and with a little more up-gradation there could be a fresh new working plan, why did they take so long? But better late than never, it is high time we invest more in matters like education, bureaucracy, health, and other such important matters.
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