Or would do so, if he was being consistent.
During a press briefing at WHO headquarters last week, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, came tantalisingly close to identifying a big problem with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control treaty.
As reported in Geneva Solutions:
Tedros said that the organisation had already identified in a 2017 analysis its overreliance on a few major donors as a “systemic problem” and its need for reform.
Commenting on the fact that so little of the WHO’s funding comes from contributions by member states, he concluded that “That kind of arrangement denies the independence of the organisation.”
It is encouraging that Dr Tedros is talking of reform because there is no doubt the agency requires a lot of it.
Dr Tedros was conciliatory towards the Trump administration, saying that, “We are open to reform. If they want to pay us less…We want them to pay us less.”
If he were consistent in this new attitude of reform, there is one person he could instruct the FCTC Secretariat not to take money from too. For it would certainly improve the perceived independence of the organisation if it stopped taking huge amounts of money from Michael Bloomberg.
As referred to quite recently, perhaps the WHO’s tobacco treaty might have less of a “systemic problem” if it wasn’t hopelessly in hock to the World’s premier opponent of safer nicotine products.
“Bloomberg Philanthropies gave the WHO more than $18m for its anti-tobacco work in 2021 and 2022, tax filings show. WHO officials have said that Bloomberg’s money helps them implement their programs but does not affect policy making.”
Yeah, right.
Bloomberg not only gives a lot of money to the WHO, he also funds the production of FCTC reports which cherry-pick evidence to suit his own personal view of harm reduction.
His extensive involvement is also “mentioned as providing financial resources for tobacco control work in the Parties” regularly in FCTC bulletins.
In short, when Bloomberg says jump, the FCTC Secretariat asks, “how high?” One might conclude that this “kind of arrangement denies the independence of” the FCTC Treaty, in the words of Dr Tedros.
Is it just coincidence that the FCTC receives a majority of its funding from those who are implacably opposed to reduced risk forms of nicotine, while it also ignores the wealth of scientific evidence that shows vaping and other lower risk products are helping to collapse smoking rates worldwide?
You decide.