Argentina’s Health Ministry confirmed on Monday that the nation will withdraw from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), condemning the U.N. agency as serving “political interests and bureaucratic structures that are reluctant to review their own mistakes.”
The announcement was issued shortly after Health Minister Mario Lugones met with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Buenos Aires to discuss topics of bilateral cooperation.
President Javier Milei first expressed his intention to have Argentina depart from the W.H.O. in February, condemning the organization as “nefarious” and the “executive branch of what was the largest experiment in social control in history.” Milei has been highly critical of the W.H.O. and condemned the organization for its poor handling of the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic during his debut speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Argentine presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni further detailed at the time that the decision was due to the W.H.O.’s handling of the pandemic and because of the “greatest confinement of mankind” through the pandemic lockdowns, which were implemented in Argentina during the administration of socialist former President Alberto Fernández.
Kennedy traveled to Buenos Aires on Sunday for a two-day visit that will include meetings with President Milei and other Argentine government officials to discuss health priorities, healthcare reform, chronic diseases, and the future of global health collaboration. President Milei is reportedly slated to meet with Kennedy on Tuesday morning.
Shortly after Health Minister Lugones met with Kennedy, the Argentine ministry issued an official statement confirming the country’s departure from the W.H.O as part of a broader five-item list of new health measures for Argentina. The measures, the Argentine Health Ministry explained, reaffirm Argentina’s shift from a “health model focused on repairing disease to one focused on caring for health based on scientific evidence.”
The statements affirms:
Argentina reaffirms its decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.). Today the evidence indicates that W.H.O. prescriptions do not work, because they are not based on science but on political interests and bureaucratic structures that are reluctant to review their own mistakes. Far from correcting the course, the W.H.O. has opted to extend competencies that do not correspond to it and to condition the health sovereignty of countries.
In view of this, the international community urgently needs to rethink the meaning of supranational organizations: if they are financed by all, they must be accountable, fulfill the purposes for which they were created and not become platforms for political imposition over the member states.
In addition to its departure from the W.H.O., the Argentine Health Ministry announced that it will conduct a deepened structural review of the nation’s health system entities to update its processes and remove obsolete rules stressing that “the system must serve people and not bureaucracy.” Similarly, the ministry will launch a “comprehensive agenda” to review and restrict the use of potentially risky synthetic additives in food products, with the aim of “protecting the health of the population – especially children – and reducing daily exposure.”
Additionally, the Health Ministry announced that the use of fast-track authorizations for very high-cost drugs will be put under review, with special emphasis on those for children and to treat rare diseases.
“Innovation cannot justify hasty decisions without solid evidence. A technical discussion will be opened on approval criteria, prioritizing patient safety and system sustainability, so that new treatments do not become authorized improvisation,” the ministry said.
Lastly, the Argentine Health Ministry announced that it will focus on the processes of manufacturing, approval, and supervision of vaccines, with the aim of “ensuring that health decisions are based on public evidence, verifiable, and with effective controls.”
“Vaccines will be subjected to clinical studies with a placebo group as a minimum standard, as is required for other medical products,” the Ministry said in the statement. “A clear example of this need is the vaccine against COVID-19, applied without a control group and under exceptional approval conditions.”
“To review is not to deny: it is to demand more evidence, not less. This approach seeks to increase the rigor of the process and strengthen public confidence based on comparable, accessible and verifiable data,” the ministry statement continued. “At the same time, safe vaccination campaigns, such as the measles campaign, with proven efficacy and international consensus, are maintained and strengthened.”
According to the Argentine government, Lugones and Kennedy discussed the approach to chronic diseases and the authorization processes for drugs, vaccines, and patents during their meeting, which served to begin defining a joint work agenda between the countries to “strengthen transparency and trust in the health system from a focus on prevention, food safety, and cost efficiency.”
“Together with Robert Kennedy, we believe in the future of collaboration in global health. We have similar visions about the direction to follow and we are confident that this will give us the possibility to deepen the work between both countries,” Lugones said at the end of the meeting.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Read the full article here