Article ID: CBB979681231

Contesting a Pandemic: The WHO and the Council of Europe (2017)

unapi

Contemporary risks are often understood as fundamentally uncertain. This uncertain status can be mobilized within political debates surrounding risks. Such a challenge serves to destabilize scientific claims. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) management of the 2009/10 spread of the H1N1 virus became a site of one such contestation. Debate within the Council of Europe particularly served to criticize the action of the WHO. This resulted in a definitional and policy contestation between the two institutions. The WHO accounted for its actions through allusions to (seemingly stable) scientific facts, using epidemiological evidence of influenza and its management based on normal science. In contrast, in criticizing public expenditure and panic, the Council of Europe critics problematized the stability of the science employed by the WHO. This included fundamental aspects of scientific knowledge such as the measurability of morbidity and mortality caused by H1N1 and the effect of vaccination against influenza viruses. This criticism relied upon the ability to destabilize the WHO’s scientific knowledge, a process made possible through understandings of the uncertain nature of the science of risk (post-normal science). The case study illustrates that potential for previous-established and seemingly stable scientific facts to become destabilized and problematized during contestations of risk management.

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Authors & Contributors
Simonutti, Luisa
M. Cristina Amoretti
Maria Marloth
Juan Del Llano
Stefania Achella
Elisabetta Lalumera
Concepts
Medicine and society
Pandemics
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Public health
Epidemics
Medicine
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
19th century
Early modern
20th century
Modern
Places
Europe
United States
Institutions
World Health Organization (WHO)
UNICEF
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
World Bank
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