Time to ditch ‘failed’ WHO, says Cameron

THE World Health Organisation failed to warn the world about coronavirus earlier because it is “riven with politics”, David Cameron has claimed, as he backed calls f or an i ndependent global warning system to identify future pandemics.

In a clear swipe at the health body, the former prime minister yesterday said he would prefer “wholesale reform” but believed establishing an independent system was a more realistic way to “plug the gaps”.

With the UK leading calls for an early warning system to be established, Mr Cameron said that it was now time for a “surveillance organisation” to link a “network” of scientific bodies around the world.

It comes two months after Boris Johnson called for countries around the world to establish new data-sharing agreements to ensure they are alerted to a potential pandemic much earlier.

The WHO has always strongly denied claims that it delayed reporting the outbreak in China. However, speaking at the Confederation of British Industry, Mr Cameron said: “[ The] WHO has many strengths but there is a key weakness in the system.

“That is that when something goes wrong in a country, what we rely on is the country telling the WHO there is a problem and then we rely on the WHO telling all of us that there is a problem.

“In the case of Covid, as in the case of Ebola, those links don’t really work. Countries don’t really want to own up to the problem of a virus, and the WHO is quite riven with politics and often doesn’t want to immediately get that information out,” Mr Cameron claimed.

“I think this is the time for some sort of surveillance organisation that links together scientific organisations as a sort of network, using the latest technology. I think that would help spread the information about where the next problem is going to come from so that we are better prepared and more early prepared.

“The wholesale reform of the WHO would be a lovely thing but I think we’d be waiting a very long time for that to happen. So better to plug the gaps than overhaul the whole of the machinery.”