Late last month, Liberal Senator Alex Antic invited Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur and former World Health Organization (WHO) medical officer Dr David Bell to Parliament House to provide a briefing on the work of the International Health Reform Panel (IHRP).
The IHRP is an independent research initiative focused on institutional design, accountability, and reform in global health governance.
Professor Thakur, former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, is considered one of the world’s leading scholars in international governance, sovereignty and multilateral institutions.
Dr Bell is a public health physician, epidemiologist and former medical officer and scientist with the WHO, with extensive experience in infectious disease control, global health policy and international health programmes.
Professor Thakur and Dr Bell form part of the IHRP, with other scholars and practitioners in international law, political theory, economics, public health, and institutional design, and briefed those present, which included representatives from both houses of parliament, on elements of key reports developed by the IHRP.
These include The Right to Health Sovereignty: Policy Report and the Right to Health Sovereignty: Technical Report, which together inform the International Health Reform Project.
The briefing was introduced by NSW Lawyer Katie Ashby-Koppens, who said that the IHRP and its associated projects and reports have been developed in response to growing international debate surrounding the future of global health governance.
“These include the role of the World Health Organization, the 2024 International Health Regulations amendments, and the proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement,” she says.
Professor Thakur and Dr Bell argued during the briefing that the WHO is no longer the same organisation it was established to be 80 years ago.
“Their mission has changed from serving maximum global health outcomes in terms of the burden of disease around the world, to growing their own power, growing their own resources, growing their own authority … and that’s the way bureaucracies work,” says Professor Thakur.
Professor Thakur refers to this as “… mission creep and mission drift.”
Dr Bell presented funding data from the WHO, highlighting that the WHO’s largest donors are no longer the countries that used to contribute to a central fund, which was allocated according to greatest need at any given time.
“The largest donors are now private, followed by private/public partnerships,” Dr Bell says.
“Over 80% of this funding is also ‘specified’ funding, which means that an entity gives funds to WHO for a specified project to be done at a specified time in a specified way.”
The funding data of the WHO indicates 87% in specified funding.
Because of what Dr Bell and Professor Thakur describe as these serious conflicts of interest, Dr Bell stated it was inevitable that priorities have become dangerously skewed to meet the objectives of these donors yet are not supported by even the United Nations own data.
“Over the last twenty years, where 180,000 deaths have been attributed to influenza outbreaks, we have had over 60 million deaths from malaria, TB, and HIV, which were once the focus of WHO,” he said.
The two argued that there is no evidence to support the diversion of funds from the main determinants of health, such as access to nutrition, clean water, and sanitation, and the health conditions that continue to represent far more significant illness and death rates across the world.
Dr Thakur cited data from the United Nations World Water Development Report 2026, released on 19 March, which stated that as of 2024, around 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water services; 3.4 billion people lack safely managed sanitation; and
1.7 billion people lack basic hygiene services at home.
Professor Thakur questioned why poorer countries should be required to redirect resources from addressing these priorities in their health threats infrastructure, “… in order to help with global pandemic preparedness efforts that is a donors-driven WHO priority?”
This isn’t just an abstract problem for international bureaucrats over in Geneva.
It hits directly at the heart of our federal political sandbox here in Canberra.
Just last year, the Australian Government enthusiastically welcomed the adoption of the formal WHO Pandemic Agreement, marking a long-term commitment to multi-sectoral disease surveillance. For the years 2023 – 2026, the Australian Government committed to providing approximately $235 million in funding to the WHO.
Professor Thakur and Dr Bell added that concurrently, millions have been poured into establishing the new, permanent Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC).
Against this funding backdrop, however, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) released only days ago its Australia’s Health 2026 report, which shows a significant structural shift in what is killing Australians.
We aren’t being wiped out by sudden, exotic pathogens; we are losing our loved ones to the quiet, long-term erosion of chronic and aging-related conditions.
Statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics referred to in the report cite that as at the end of 2024, dementia & Alzheimer’s is the number one killer at 17,550 deaths;
ischaemic heart disease at 16,326 deaths; chronic lower respiratory diseases: 9,239 deaths; COVID-19: 4,029 deaths, now sitting at 12th on the national register, and influenza and Pneumonia: 3,672 deaths.
Australians’ health needs also continue to be compromised by a severe shortage of general practitioners, access to specialists and associated treatments and surgeries, ambulance ramping and unprecedented mental and other health issues.
However, despite these domestic priorities and the dire priorities of poorer countries, Professor Thakur and Dr Bell maintain a paucity in evidence for pandemic-associated effort at the scale it is now, and both a misrepresentation and misinterpretation of data.
Misrepresentation, which they say is used to support the fear-driven pandemic agendas delivered to policymakers, via the WHO, direct from the bottom lines of their largest donors.
Dr Bell referred to the ongoing messaging that 2.5 million deaths on average each year are attributable to pandemics, which he reiterates again is not supported by any evidence from the United Nations.
“The WHO is repeating this, it’s been in The Lancet, and it was put into the New Zealand Royal Commission on COVID as to why this (pandemic preparedness) is so important,” Dr Bell says.
“2.5 million is more than the WHO recorded during COVID. But they are saying that this is the average number of deaths now from pandemics and that this is why we have to concentrate on this area.
“The way they get this data is from …modelling.
“They are taking the bubonic plague from medieval Europe and putting it against today’s population, and they are coming up with 2.5 million people dying on average.”
Dr Bell stated that this modelling completely ignores the impact of medical technology, sanitation and all the changes from the 14th century until now and categorises the 2.5 million estimate as a “…gross exaggeration of the truth.”
Professor Thakur and Dr Bell also presented data regarding the cost/benefit of the COVID lockdowns, referring to over one hundred subsequent peer-reviewed studies, which consistently show extraordinary cost and little to no effect on the death rate.
Summarised below:
Both the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade ( DFAT) and the Department of Health Care and Ageing were contacted for a response, regarding whether the Australian Government considers it safe, transparent, and democratic that the world’s primary multilateral health agency is financially dominated by a private philanthropic foundation and tens of millions of dollars in anonymous and possibly significantly conflicted funds.
Also, given Australia’s reliance on WHO guidance, a comment was requested regarding how the government verifies that the public health policies it adopts have not been unduly influenced or compromised by the commercial interests of the biotech and pharmaceutical entities backing these private donors.
A comment was also requested as to why Australia is supporting a global public health agenda that seeks to divert billions of dollars annually into top-down pandemic preparedness machinery when regional data provided by the UN itself shows that resources are far more desperately needed for basic health systems, sanitation, nutrition, and endemic disease control.
No response has been received at the time of publishing; however, this article will be updated accordingly should this occur.
Information on global health initiatives via the Australian Government can be found here, however.
Professor Thakur and Dr Bell emphasised that rather than focusing solely on criticism of existing arrangements, the IHRP project seeks to identify constructive reforms and practical solutions that better balance international cooperation with national sovereignty, transparency, evidence-based decision-making, and individual rights.
“International cooperation in health remains important, but cooperation is strongest when it is transparent, accountable, and commands public trust,” says Dr Bell.
The International Health Reform Project seeks to contribute practical ideas that strengthen both international collaboration and democratic legitimacy.”
Dr Bell and Professor Thakur argue that governments are not being given correct information regarding global health priorities and that too much authority has been surrendered to experts.
“Don’t leave it to the experts,” says Professor Thakur.
“That is a criminal abdication of your responsibility as governments.”
