About 150 of the world’s top doctors, researchers and medical ethicists have demanded in a letter to the World Health Organization.
The message was delivered on Friday to the Geneva-based WHO, is the latest blast in a growing chorus of concerns, coming from doctors and also from some athletes about the rational of going ahead with the Olympics given the severity of the Zika virus crisis in Brazil.
It also questioned whether the WHO’s reluctance thus far to offer any kind of recommendations to reschedule or relocate the Games might be a result of a conflict of interest between itself and the International Olympic Committee, IOC. The two bodies signed a memorandum of understanding on future partnerships six years ago, the letter points out.
“Many athletes, delegations, and journalists are struggling with the decision of whether to participate in the Rio 2016 Games,” it says. “We agree with the US Centres for Disease Control recommendation that workers should ‘Consider delaying travel to areas with active Zika virus transmission’.
If that advice were followed uniformly, no athlete would have to choose between risking disease and participating in a competition that many have trained for their whole lives.”
Among the signatories to the letter is Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa professor who wrote earlier this month in Time magazine that having the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro had become unwise. Dr Arthur Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York University, co-authored the letter, as did NYU professor Lee Ingel and Christopher Gaffney from the University of Zurich.
“WHO must revisit the question of Zika and postponing and/or moving the Games,” the letter concludes. “We recommend that WHO convene an independent group to advise it and the IOC in a transparent, evidence-based process in which science, public health, and the spirit of sport come first. Given the public health and ethical consequences, not doing so is irresponsible.”
“What we’re really focused on is can we have transparent, open, frank, televised, out-in-the-open discussion with experts” unconnected to the Olympics, Dr Caplan told ABC News in New York. “We think WHO is close to the IOC. ... They work together a lot.”
There is concern not only for the athletes but also for hundreds of thousands of visitors expected at the Olympics. Also cause for possible alarm is the impact all those visitors might have on helping the virus to spread further around the world when they return home afterwards.
“We’re worried about bringing the mosquito back to places it isn’t, like India,” Dr Caplan said. “You have people who will be infected and ... there are people literally coming from everywhere.”
The letter originally had 125 names attached to it but an additional 25 experts volunteered just on Friday to add their signatures to it.
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