Things I learned from being around the Geneva world-health behemoth
What is WHO, where and why? Such questions abound these days regarding the UN health-expert body, and have flown around the Internet since the Covid pandemic was officially announced in March 2020. I have no medical expertise, but some personal and anecdotal knowledge of its role. This can help clear up the fog enveloping the embattled global giant.
Long ago I applied for a job at WHO, was called in for a short-list exam and interview, but never heard back. It was 1998 and, having recently arrived from New York to work as an editor at UN Geneva, I received a belated reply from WHO to my application for an editorial post there. But this came to naught, which may have been fortunate. I moved on to a fruitful 15-year career elsewhere in UN Geneva, focusing on human rights.
The WHO building was part of the neighbourhood there, one of many UN agencies dominating an entire sector of the city. It was very much part of daily life: I went there regularly for meetings, conferences, documents. I met friends there and attended parties. As a board member of the UN staff monthly, we shared editorial duties with WHO colleagues. Their cafeteria was one of the better ones on the midday Tour des Cafeterias that I often took around UN buildings; they had a a good salad bar, as I recall. On the way home, the suburban-bound F bus passed nearby, and I often stretched my legs by walking 2-3 stops past the UN Geneva gates to the bus stops near the WHO gardens.
Many friends worked at WHO, often Irish and British women who had come to Europe with English-language skills that helped them into admin posts, and who sometimes advanced impressively in the WHO bureaucracy. Other friends worked in HR, IT or Finance.
Precarious contracts
All of them agreed: there were problems at WHO. Lots of administrative fiats without clear basis. A rigid hierarchy. Massive staff downsizing. And loads of short-term and precarious contracts for staff who needed financial stability. In 2011, there was even a one-day strike. People were not happy.
As a staff-union activist, I tried to publicize these issues and our union, New Wood, tried to help. But like many big UN agencies the vagaries of contributions by member States made it hard for Human Resources to plan its spending.
Which brings us to the core of the issue today: how good and useful is the WHO?
As an editor, I was always impressed by their key publications, one of which was the solidly produced monthly Bulletin for medical readers on world health topics, complete with full tables of statistics and three-language summaries. WHO disease alerts and issue-raising were excellent. They developed the first aggressive HIV-AIDS programme, which later spun off into an entirely new body, UNAIDS. WHO has been the ultimate source of all those grisly photos you see on cigarette packages and its anti-tobacco campaign continues. WHO highlights the fight against residual landmines. Obesity and lifestyle issues have more recently climbed its agenda as the world middle class has expanded.
In 2009-10 the H1N1 pandemic saw WHO in full-throated alert. While the general Swiss population did not have obligatory immunizations, UN staff did. Many colleagues resented this; the vaccine was rumoured to sicken people. I dutifully got mine, with no side-effects. The epidemic soon petered out. Many people faulted WHO for overreacting.
Which brings us to the current pandemic, one which is largely WHO-centric. On Feb. 11, 2020, WHO named the new virus “Covid-19”. Then they launched the pandemic alert in mid-March, which brought much of daily life in the West to a crashing halt under lockdown. WHO guidance as to best practices – hand-washing, social distancing – has been at the core of States’ actions.
Too close to China?
Finally, in early May WHO dropped its more apocalyptic Covid forecasts and adopted a realist platform, endorsing the Swedish model of relaxed lockdown as the best way forward in the longer term (see https://tinyurl.com/Sweden-WHO). This was much welcome, but belated. It came well after Britain had been scared stiff in March by doomsday predictions. PM Boris Johnson reversed course from a relaxed to a severe lockdown. People could suddenly get arrested for jogging in UK parks or walking on the open beach. Nutty.
Complaints soon came that WHO was too close to China, and had downplayed the extent and nature of the initial virus spread. This is unproven, but ongoing. China is a major UN member with a huge population and of course WHO works closely with them, balancing other regional and world demands. These issues will play out in coming months.
Under U.S. pressure, which threatened to withdraw from the body in 2021, WHO announced in July a “full review” of its response to Covid-19: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI9S7a-nlYk .
The interim report, released on Jan. 18, 2021, underlined numerous “missteps and failures” both by WHO and by Governments in response to a large-scale health threat: https://tinyurl.com/WHO-inquiry
This crisis of confidence could end several ways, after the new Democratic administration cancelled the US withdrawal and again becoming a leading influence there. Stay tuned.
All these memories and my connections to WHO have come to mind during the pandemic as a bit of a surprise. I never thought of WHO as a close relation, so to speak, but more like a distant, inscrutable colleague. It is authoritative but disjointed, and an imposing place full of human error.
Now I am happy to hear again from WHO. Just glad they never hired me.
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Sidebar:
The phantom “doctor”
One of the bizarre and fascinating stories about WHO during the time we lived in Geneva was that of a doctor who had worked at WHO — but who was neither a doctor nor actually worked at WHO. This long-running charade ended with tragic consequences.
This true-life drama was later recounted by French writer Emmanuel Carrere in his best-selling book L’Adversaire (2000), in English The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception (2001). The book was turned into not one but two French movies, both released within months of each other in 2002.
In short, “doctor” Jean-Claude Romand seemed to lead a model life as a UN functionary. Every day he kissed his wife goodbye in suburban France, and drove in to his work at WHO. He prowled the vast lobby, drinking coffee and picking up publications and souvenirs, which he carefully dropped at home each evening, as evidence of his busy days there. He went away at length for “conferences”, and scrupulously picked up Mexican sombreros or Thai buddha statuettes as souvenirs for his return home. Somehow, the façade held. For years, Dr. Romand impressed friends and family with his professional success.
But, you might ask, how did he make a living? Working in Switzerland, Romand proposed casually to several members of his entourage in France, in an increasingly wide Ponzi-like scheme, to invest their savings in Swiss funds, tax-free with great returns. People fell for it. The doctor spent the cash.
Eventually, things caught up with Romand. He was sometimes sighted at autoroute rest-stops killing time during working hours and had to explain that he was on vacation or en route to yet-another conference somewhere. Occasionally, he got mixed up, and discrepancies appeared. Pre-cellphone, he was not always reachable, but replied to his beeper to cover his tracks.
Suspicions arose, and some investors got worried about their money. The walls started to close in. Romand suffered a meltdown, and in grief and anger killed his entire family before setting their house on fire. Family friends and his colleagues were flabbergasted. Our son’s pediatrician had been a close friend of Romand’s, but never had a clue about the decades-long deception. I often drove past that house, thoroughly cleaned-up but with slight burn marks around the windows still visible.
A tragedy based on lies. But in the end, WHO itself was blameless. Maybe there is a lesson there.
@DavidWinchEditorial, 2020
