'WHO has lost its independence, Indian govt should exit global health body'
Malhotra has alleged that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has completely lost its independence and suggested that the Indian government should ignore its advice on various issues and exit the global health body. Talking to PTI, Malhotra, who gave a lecture at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here on «The Corporate Capture of Medicine and Public Health» recently, also claimed that regulators do not independently evaluate data related to drugs.
«Drug regulators, such as the FDA, who are supposed to evaluate drugs, receive 65 per cent of their funding from big pharma.
The regulator in the UK gets 86 per cent funding from the pharma companies. So this is a gross conflict of interest. Patients and doctors think these organisations are independently evaluating the data, but they are not doing that.
Till we remove these commercial conflicts of interest from health policies and decision making, we are not going to progress,» Malhotra said.
As for the WHO, Malhotra said the organisation has completely lost its independence.
«Seventy per cent of the funding of the World Health Organisation comes from commercial entities… As long as the WHO is getting industry funding or funding from vested interests, it should not be considered independent and the Indian government should ignore its advice.
Those commercial entities are not interested in your health, they will make money by deception,» he said.
The WHO should be independently funded, otherwise governments, doctors and the public cannot have confidence that their recommendations are based on the best available evidence, Malhotra said.
Medical knowledge is under commercial control but most doctors do not know that, he said, adding, «What that means is
