Influencing World Health Organization policy

The Collaboration's status as a Non-Governmental Organization in Official Relations with the World Health Organization (WHO) has allowed us to formalise projects we've already been working on together and to comment on WHO documents and proposed policies.

WHO Reproductive Health Library

One of the significant joint projects the WHO and the Collaboration have already developed is the WHO Reproductive Health Library. This is an electronic journal covering sexual and reproductive health produced by the WHO’s Department of Reproductive Health and Research using the best available evidence from Cochrane Reviews.

This initiative has helped millions of women and babies in developing countries through practice recommendations on newborn health, pregnancy and childbirth, and sexually transmitted infections.

One such recommendation is the elimination of the routine use of episiotomies (cutting the skin and muscle surrounding the vagina) during childbirth, which often leads to perineal trauma, infection and painful intercourse.

WHO Library of Evidence for Nutrition Actions  

The Collaboration has contributed to the new e-Library of Evidence for Nutrition Actions (eLENA), an online library of evidence-informed guidelines for nutrition interventions. It is a single point of reference for the latest nutrition guidelines, recommendations and related information such as:

• available scientific evidence supporting the guidelines
• biological, behavioural and contextual rationale statements
• commentaries from invited experts

eLENA aims to help countries successfully implement and scale-up nutrition interventions by informing as well as guiding policy development and programme design. Interventions listed in eLENA contain links to relevant Cochrane Reviews, as well as to the international clinical trials register. Access eLENA, here.

International health regulations and the H1N1 pandemic

In June 2009, the outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus - which became widely known as 'swine flu' - was declared a pandemic by the WHO. Following the announcement of the end of the pandemic by the WHO's Director-General, Margaret Chan, in August 2010, the WHO was subject to criticism that it had overestimated the severity of the outbreak ^[1].

In early March 2011, the Collaboration was invited to comment on the WHO's Preview Report of the Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations (2005) and on Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) 2009, which summarises the conclusions and recommendations of the WHO's International Health Regulations Review Committee, who were commissioned to review WHO's response to the H1N1 pandemic. The Final Report, based on the Preview Report and amended following comments, was presented to the World Health Assembly, in May 2011.

Amongst our comments on the Preview Report, we suggest that it would strengthen the evidence-base for decisions made if a methodologist, systematic review expert or evidence synthesis expert were appointed to the emergency committees convened to manage the WHO's response to situations like the H1N1 pandemic. We also suggest that the decision to formally move a disease outbreak to pandemic status should take into account both the spread, but also the virulence of the disease.

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^[1] 2009 Flu pandemic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic, retrieved 15.04.2011
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