GENEVA — Twitter CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday (March 23) in a tweet that countries should not “cede authority” to the World Health Organisation, and the UN health agency’s chief quickly rejected his comments.
“Countries should not cede authority to WHO,” Musk, whose Twitter account has more than 132 million followers, wrote in response to a video of right-wing Australian senator Malcolm Roberts criticising the organisation.
Sen. Malcolm Roberts says that Australia should not cede its sovereignty to the WHO due to the organization's corruption that generates billions for its owner, Bill Gates and because Tedros is an evil "killer" tied to a terrorist organization.pic.twitter.com/iSXmbRKUAQ
— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 23, 2023
“Countries aren’t ceding sovereignty to @WHO,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted in response. “The #PandemicAccord won’t change that. The accord will help countries better guard against pandemics,” he added.
Countries should not cede authority to WHO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2023
In separate comments at the WHO’s weekly news conference later on Thursday, Tedros said the claim that the pandemic treaty would see countries relinquish power to the WHO was “quite simply false” and “fake news.”
“If any politician or businessperson, or anyone at all is confused about what the pandemic accord is and isn’t, we would be more than happy to discuss it and explain it,” Tedros said, in an apparent reference to Musk’s comments.
Since Covid-19 first emerged more than three years ago, the World Health Organization has complained of an “infodemic” of misinformation and disinformation around the pandemic.
At times the UN agency has been the direct target of such attacks, with some commentators accusing it of seeking to wrest health policy away from governments, especially since international negotiations between member states began over a new pandemic treaty to avoid and deal with future outbreaks.
The WHO is made of 194 member states which take major decisions on its health policies and budgets through an annual assembly attended by governments.
This article was first published in Asia One . All contents and images are copyright to their respective owners and sources.
