Mark Freeman
A Wellington drama troupe took to the streets at the weekend to satirise and raise awareness of the World Health Organization’s pandemic treaty.
The Freedom Improv Group wrote and performed the light-hearted eight-minute sketch, whose main message was to “Give the WHO the shoe”.
In the sketch, two officials from the WHO collude with a corrupt politician to bring in the pandemic treaty. Two members of the public, who had been diagnosed as suffering from climate change and were subsequently vaccinated for it, get disillusioned with the pandemic treaty and kick the WHO out of their country.
Group spokesman Mark says the pandemic treaty aims to take control of world health and link it to climate change. People need to keep speaking out and presenting alternative views, he says.
Global health leaders had hoped the treaty would be agreed on by May 24, but countries meeting at the World Health Assembly in Geneva failed to agree on the treaty’s wording, meaning months of further negotiations will be required. There are concerns that the pandemic treaty, along with major amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations (2005), will pose a major threat to nations’ sovereignty.
[Note: it appears the WHO finalised the pandemic agreement regardless, over the weekend, and after this article was written. Ed.]
