WHO review panel on COVID-19 pandemic response to submit its report next year

World Health Organisation (WHO) has appointed an independent panel to review its coordination of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The panel has said that it will have full access to any internal UN agency documents, materials, and emails. 

According to the reports, the panel’s co-chairs, former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, announced the 11 other members on Thursday, September 3.

READ: WHO Chief Tedros Hopes To See World Free From COVID-19 Completely In 2 Years

High-level panel

The WHO panel includes Dr. Joanne Liu, who criticised WHO while he was heading Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. 

In addition to that, the high-level panel also includes notable names like Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a renowned Chinese medic who first confirmed human-to-human transmission of COVID-19; Mark Dybul, who chaired the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; and David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary who is CEO of the International Rescue Committee. 

READ: WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Expects World To Hit 20 Mn COVID-19 Cases This Week

Helen Clark is reported to have stated that she and Johnson Sirleaf selected the panel members independently and confirmed that no attempt was made by WHO to influence their choices.

While commenting on the panel, Johnson Sirleaf said, "We must honor the more than 25.6 million people known to have contracted the disease and the 850,000 and counting who have died from COVID-19". 

As per reports, the board will first meet on September 17 and every six weeks until April 2021. It hopes to brief WHO on the underlying progress in November before introducing the last report one year from now. 

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier said that he hopes that the world can get rid of the COVID-19 pandemic in less than two years - lesser time than it took to stop the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. He called the pandemic 'once-in-a-century health crisis' and asserted that globalisation had allowed the virus to spread quicker than the Spanish flu did in 1918.

However, Ghebreyesus also added that the world now has the technology to stop it which was not available a century ago. He asserted that by utilising the available tools to the maximum and additional tools like vaccines can halt the virus spread in a shorter time than the 1918 flu.

READ: WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Calls COVID-19 Pandemic 'once-in-a-century' Crisis

READ: WHO Expects Results From COVID-19 Drug Trials In 2 Weeks, Says Dr Tedros Adhanom

With AP inputs