PRESS RELEASE

As the World Health Assembly is meeting, civil society asks WHO to move away from support to privatisation of healthcare amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

 25 May 2021

• Civil society organisations publish a joint statement expressing concern that the World Health Organisation (WHO) is encouraging the commercialisation of healthcare during the pandemic.

• Comments come in response to a strategy report

• published by the WHO in December 2020.

• CSO statement condemns the role of the private sector in COVID-19 response, highlighting that some private hospitals in India have been accused of overcharging and/or refusing to treat patients.

• Organisations call for a “truly open and consultative process” to clarify the status of the report and for all WHO strategies to be “clearly aligned with the right to health, international human rights law and WHO’s commitment to promote quality public healthcare”.

Several civil society organisations supporting the right to health sent an open letter to Zsuzsanna Jakab, Deputy Director-General of the WHO and published a joint statement on Monday 24th May, ahead of the opening of the World Health Assembly, arguing that the World Health Organisation must resist the commercialisation of healthcare. 

The groups, including Public Services International, the People’s Health Movement, GI-ESCR and Global Justice Now, argue that a strategy report published online by the WHO promotes “mixed” public-private health systems and fails to take into account the human rights implications of promoting private sector engagement in health. 

Rossella De Falco, Right to Health Programme Officer at the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights said: “A clear lesson from the COVID-19 crisis is that it is impossible to face pandemics without a strong public healthcare system. We’re concerned that with this report, published in the middle of the pandemic, the WHO is giving in to the siren calls of health corporations that want a bigger share of the healthcare market. As WHO Member States are meeting this week, we call on the WHO to review its position, be a leader in promoting strong quality public healthcare systems and in reverting the commercialisation trend that has damaged the right to health in the last decades.” 

Daniel Willis, Development Finance Campaigner at Global Justice Now, said:

“The pandemic has been a boom time for disaster capitalists in the private sector: the Covid-19 response has been privatised by stealth in many countries and big pharma is reaping huge profits from its publicly funded vaccines. These trends towards commercialisation in health go against all the evidence: that universal public healthcare is the best way of protecting rights and health outcomes.”

Ravi Ram, activist of the People’s Health Movement Kenya, said: “Civil society participation in developing WHO's proposed 'private sector engagement strategy' is critical to ensure that (a) the strategy supports health rights and (b) that WHO fulfills its own commitment to transparency. In the absence of meaningful civil society contributions, the proposed strategy risks substantive conflicts with other WHO constituencies.”

For more information on this press release, please contact:

Rossella De Falco, Right to Health Programme Officer rossella@gi-escr.org or Nellie Epinat, Communications Officer nellie@gi-escr.org at the at the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Documents:

-       Public statement

-       Open letter and analysis of the report

-       Report from the WHO

Update: Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab responded to our open letter on 24th May 2021:

• WHO Response to our open letter.