The following is from USA Today: A Feb. 1 article published by The People’s Voice claims the World Health Organization called on the world to grant it new powers to help prevent the spread of disease.
“WHO Demands Surveillance Powers to Monitor Every Man, Woman & Child For ‘Disease Control,’” reads the headline of the article. An Instagram post with a similar version of the claim accumulated more than 2,000 likes in four days before it was deleted.
A WHO spokesperson said the claim is false. It distorts recommendations found in a draft of a proposed treaty, confuses public health surveillance with military surveillance and originated on a website that routinely publishes misinformation.
The article claims the WHO made the demand for surveillance powers in the latest draft of its international pandemic treaty, which WHO member nations agreed to develop in 2022 to prepare for future pandemics.
An early draft of that proposed accord was published in February 2023, but the final draft isn’t expected to be considered until May. But the treaty does not include a demand for the power to surveil every person on the planet.
The claim in the Facebook post is false and distorts recommendations in the draft, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told USA TODAY. “There has been a strong disinformation campaign about the pandemic treaty or accord that the WHO member states are currently negotiating,” Jasarevic said in an email.
The article claims WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO needs additional surveillance powers to track the public and monitor “the health of people, animals and ecosystems.”
While that specific phrase does appear on Page 6 of the 32-page treaty draft, the claim confuses the meaning of surveillance in a public health context with how the term is used in a law enforcement or military setting.
While the word “surveillance” appears in the document six times, none of those mentions has anything to do with spying or covertly tracking people. It’s about monitoring health data. (READ MORE)
