United Nations Health Official Criticizes Gates Foundation

An official at the World Health Organization says he fears the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has taken on undue influence on malaria research, reports The New York Times.

In a memo to the World Health Organization’s director general, Arata Kochi, chief of malaria for the group, expressed his concerns that the foundation’s domination over malaria research could eliminate the World Health Organization’s role in policy making and decrease the quality of scientific peer reviews. The World Health Organization is an arm of the United Nations.

Dr. Kochi wrote that the foundation’s money caused a number of the world’s leading malaria scientists to be “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group.” He also expressed his worry that the Gates foundation tries to guide World Health recommendations by pushing its favored research.

Amir Attaran, a health-policy expert at the University of Ottawa, agreed with Dr. Kochi’s assessment of the foundation and said it caused scientists to engage in “stomach-churning group think.” Dr. Attaran said he believed that scientists were intimidated by the foundation’s malaria chief, Regina Rabinovich, whom he described as “autocratic.”

Tadataka Yamada, executive director of global health at the Gates foundation, defended the grant makers, saying, “We encourage a lot of external review.”

Christine McNab, a spokeswoman for Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said Dr. Kochi’s memo was “the view of one department, not the WHO’s view.” She said that the agency had good relations with the Gates foundation.

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