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Bill Gates invitation to World Health Assembly

"Declare Microsoft a WHO member nation!' say health activists.

Geneva, 16 May, 2005: A coalition of global health activist groups has demanded that Microsoft Corporation be declared a honorary 'member country' of the World Health Organisation.

This is in light of the WHO's unprecedented invitation to Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to address the inaugural session of the 58th World Health Assembly as one of its keynote speakers.

The health activist groups, collectively known as the People's Health Movement, see the invitation as an inappropriate development which they fear, could signal an increase in undue corporate influence on the public health policies of WHO.

They also view the invitation as part of an alarming trend of various UN organizations, including the WHO, kowtowing to global multinational corporations under the guise of the 'Global Compact' and so-called 'Public-Private Partnerships'.

While Bill Gates has been ostensibly invited to the WHA in his capacity as one of the founders of the Bill and Melinda Foundation, activist groups say that the line dividing his philanthropy from his company's business strategy is very thin.

"It is time to either declare Microsoft a WHO member country or stop the shameful promotion of global corporations at important UN meetings" said a spokesperson of the People's Health Movement.

'There is no other way the WHO can really justify the invitation to Bill Gates as a key note speaker at the WHA except as a 'Head of State' of some sort.'

Health activist groups have for long questioned the entire concept of the 'Global Compact' the UN has entered into with businesses and corporations which they say undermine the world body's integrity and independence. They are also critical of the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) being promoted by the UN as these give undue importance to private profit-making bodies and have been undertaken with few public interest safeguards in place.

According to a new paper to be presented at the WHA on the theme of 'PPPs and Health for All' the UN's partnership interactions with business are often presented as part of a well-proven, inherently positive, even unavoidable, policy model. They are however actually the result of a particular ideology and need to be reconsidered.

The paper, written by independent researcher Judith Richter, suggests in order for WHO to put public interest at the centre of all its global public-private it needs to:

• abandon the partnership terminology;
• hold a public review and debate on the benefits, risks and costs of the different global public-private interactions in health when compared to alternatives;
• recover and further clarify the human rights and social justice principles underlying the WHO's work towards Health for All
• work for a clearer distinction between actors that represent or are closely linked to commercial interests and other societal actors.
  
  

For further information contact:

Satya Sivaraman: satyasagar@yahoo.com

People's Health Movement Secretariat (Global)

Email: secretariat@phmovement.org
Web: www.phmovement.org
Ph: + 91-80 - 51280009
Fax: + 91-80 - 25525372