Month: June 2023

Big trouble in little Panama

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The World Health Organization is often criticised for incompetence in a number of its policy focuses, not solely for its calamitous, head-in-the-sand position on lower-risk alternatives to smoking. But in the practice of handing awards to its buddies, it can only be described as a triumphant global expert.

To celebrate World No Tobacco Day in May, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros liberally dished out a number of motivational gongs to high-ranking members of its secretive club, and spoke in particularly glowing terms about a Special Recognition Award to Reina Roa Rodríguez, who is almost royalty in the WHO cabal. 

Dr Roa is Panama’s Focal Point for Tobacco Control, and Vice President of the WHO’s Bureau of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (MOP), but you may remember her more for featuring in two previous Copwatch updates. 

In April, Copwatch reported that Dr Roa was being investigated by Panamanian authorities for “administrative irregularities” over a conflict of interest in her role as an “independent” adviser to the Ministry of Health. Questions arose over the Panamanian Coalition Against Tabaquismo (COPACET), of which she is founder, accepting a Bloomberg Philanthropies Award for Global Tobacco Control as a reward for successfully designing public policies which aligned perfectly with the goals of, you guessed it, Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The investigation did not get very far as she promptly resigned. 

Now Dr Roa is embroiled in more controversy. In her capacity as National Coordinator of Tobacco Control of the Ministry of Health, she is responsible for arranging transport for patients in critical or serious condition to hospitals located in remote areas, for which reimbursement payments are made. 

It is alleged that there have been many discrepancies in her book-keeping for these services. Billed hours did not match those recorded on transfer request forms, invoices were found without proof of patient admission in medical records, and incomplete request forms have been discovered, with no information which correlates with the transport required.

According to a letter processed by the Court of Accounts, Dr Roa is facing an order to freeze her assets, pending repayment of $87,930. 

Panama was rocked last year by a series of nationwide protests and blockades. They were prompted by cost-of-living concerns, exacerbated by deep-seated mistrust of government officials accused of feasting on taxpayer funds, and complaints about poverty, inequality and corruption in the country. 

Dr Roa has been a Ministry of Health employee since 1986, with latest filings showing she is paid $4,294 per month, roughly five times the average Panamanian salary. In the current political climate, with the Panamanian public angry at how their leaders are behaving, it is surely unimaginable that such a stalwart of upstanding public health, a WHO high priestess and recent awardee, no less, would stoop to feathering the nest further by doctoring (no pun intended) documents for health services. 

We are sure this is merely a simple misunderstanding which will be cleared up before criminal charges are filed against Dr Roa. 

Or perhaps she could just resign again.  

Yet another murky WHO meeting

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Copwatch has often referred to the opaque nature of the WHO’s Conference of the Parties meetings. It is fully expected that the COP10 meeting in Panama will follow the same path of operating behind closed doors, as best described in this briefing from 2021.

“Also excluded are advocacy NGOs representing people directly affected by tobacco control regimes. This includes smokers and users of safer nicotine products. The involvement of the tobacco industry in the production of some but by no means all safer nicotine products means that advocacy organisations in favour of tobacco harm reduction, including numerous vaping or snus consumer advocacy organisations, are excluded de facto.”

The shadowy and forever hidden activities of the Global Tobacco Regulators Forum (GTRF) have also been documented on these pages. Most recently in April. 

“A small group of researchers, who are not keen on tobacco harm reduction, cherry-picking studies which agree with their preconceived beliefs, and citing unpublished papers from a small selection of WHO members resulting from secret meetings which are not minuted, all funded by a country which is not a Party to the Convention.”

Minutes from the last two FCTC Bureau meetings in November and March have still not surfaced either, as Copwatch has reported before. 

Now we must add yet another murky WHO meeting to the ever-growing list. 

The UN event management system carries a short notice about an event called the Global Consultation on Novel and Emerging Nicotine and Tobacco Products which is to take place in Geneva between 21 and 23 June. There is no further publicly available information about this meeting. We can assume though that this event is highly likely to be a preparation for COP10 and the work the WHO and the FCTC Secretariat are doing to recommend the full equalisation of all novel products with cigarettes in reports to be presented to the Parties. 

Framed as a consultation, Copwatch expects the result will be dedicated publications, such as these on heated tobacco and vaping products which were issued after a global consultations led by the EURO WHO region before the last COP. 

No-one outside of the WHO FCTC bubble will be allowed to view this latest secret meeting, nor do we expect to see published minutes. 

The WHO website contains a page on transparency, which confidently declares: 

“To build trust, communicators must be transparent about how WHO analyses data and how it makes recommendations and policies.

“Communicators must rapidly and publicly report the participants, processes and conclusions of guideline development meetings.”

Presumably, this is their idea of a joke.

ANPVU issues call to action

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Following on from calls to action in the UK and France, Italian consumer association ANPVU launched a similar initiative. Reacting to potential threats to vaping at COP10 they “call on all who have doubts to start mobilizing NOW to protect the most successful alternatives to smoking from the blind, unscientific and ideological hostility of the WHO”.

See the link for more details: CALL TO ACTION: l’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità sta pianificando un assalto globale allo svapo

WHO: threats to vaping – French organizations issue call to action

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Consumer associations Sovape and Aiduce have joined forces with La Vape Du Coeur and Sos Addictions to launch a call to action. The groups highlight potential threats to vaping at COP10 and call on “Any person or organization believing that they are concerned by these threats against vaping and the risk reduction approach can contact French or European elected officials now”

See the link for more details: OMS : menaces sur le vapotage

Consumer groups challenging the WHO FCTC – Who will be next?

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Now is the time for making our voices heard.

At the beginning of May, Copwatch briefly referenced potential dangers to reduced risk nicotine products at COP10 discussed in recent WHO documents which have been highlighted by the New Nicotine Alliance UK. 

The British consumer organisation launched a call to action in March to encourage “supporters, consumers of reduced risk nicotine products, and others who understand the benefits of harm reduction” to write to their elected representatives and also to the assigned UK focal point to the FCTC Bureau and European region. 

It has started something of a movement. 

In April, four French groups led by consumer association, SoVape, followed suit and began their own similar campaign, declaring that “an offensive against vaping is being prepared ahead of COP10.” A week later, Italian group ANPVU joined the party by inviting Italian consumers to do the same. 

End Cigarette Smoking in Thailand, a consumer association with over 100,000 online followers, also threw their hat in the ring on May 5th, with a press release urging the Thai government and focal point to object to WHO plans to apply bans and restrictions to vaping products at the COP10 meeting in Panama in November. 

Prior to previous COP meetings, the FCTC Secretariat has enjoyed a comfortable ride in producing biassed materials to guide national delegations into hostility towards harm reduction. 

WHO appointees to the FCTC Bureau and Secretariat have always thrived under the cloak of secrecy they cleverly weaved around preparations for COP conferences. They have been mostly unchallenged when ignoring evidence on the effectiveness of safer nicotine and peddling their anti-harm reduction agenda to member delegations. But it appears consumer groups all around the world are alive to their antics this year. 

We are sure that there will be policymakers in the above-mentioned countries finding out for the first time that the WHO is riding roughshod over the concerns of their citizens. With another month or so before delegations form their country positions, messages from the public could be crucial.  

The agenda for COP10 will not be produced until September so there is still time for many other consumer groups to start their own campaigns and we are sure they will. It is becoming quite trendy. 

Speaking truth to power is widely regarded as a virtuous action, but the WHO has been at pains to minimise the risk of this happening with their COP preparations over the years. Engagement with the WHO and their appointed FCTC administrative bureaucracies has been made deliberately impossible, but it is national governments who make the decisions at COP meetings and, unless they are set up as a dictatorship like the WHO, they are beholden to their electorate. 

Copwatch is keen to see which national consumer group will be next out of the blocks to urge their followers to get involved in the COP10 process via the democratic process. Could it be yours? 

If so, time is of the essence. The registration process for submitting national delegations opened on 8 May, so governments will already be thinking about who to send to COP10. The sooner they hear our voices, the better. 

We will be adding the current initiatives to our campaigns tab and look forward to adding more in the near future.

New Nicotine Alliance: Call to Action

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In March, UK consumer association the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) issued a call to action against what it describes as “significant threats” to tobacco harm reduction planned by the World Health Organization (WHO) at COP10. The NNA are urging supporters, consumers of safer nicotine products, and those that recognize the benefits of harm reduction to contact their elected representatives to voice their concerns.

See the link for more details: CALL TO ACTION: The World Health Organization is planning a global assault on vaping