May 12, 2021
With the upcoming World Health Assembly at the end of May, and indications that the World Health Organization (WHO) director-general plans to seek a second term in office, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the world’s largest provider of HIV/AIDS care globally, calls on the United Nations Member States to consider and address the many ways in which the WHO did not measure up to the task of protecting the world from COVID-19.
“It is now fourteen months since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and the world was thrown into chaos. Vaccinations are ramping up, but much too slowly in many parts of the world – and countries like India are on ‘fire’,” said AHF President Michael Weinstein. “Coordinated international efforts to control COVID-19 have been virtually non-existent, raising the question—why was the world so unprepared for this pandemic? And more importantly, why did the institution with the primary responsibility of protecting global public health, the World Health Organization, fail so catastrophically?”