IndependentWHO

On 11th March 2013, on the occasion of the second anniversary of the beginning of the Fukushima health disaster, the members of IndependentWHO have sent to WHO the Proceedings of the Forum which we organised in Geneva in May 2012. A letter addressed to Dr Chan, Director of WHO has also been sent, requesting that she meet with representatives of citizen organisations to discuss the violations of the Right to Health associated with the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan. In Dr Chan’s absence, it was Dr Maria Neira, Director of the Public Health and Environment Department who greeted the  [ Read More ]

As the end of year holidays arrived, a third respite break was organised in Takashima, a town close to Kyoto, for the children who live in the areas heavily contaminated by the Fukushima disaster. Makiko Fujimoto is a mother, and it is she who organises these respite breaks simply because, for her, it is natural to do the most that you can to ensure that the children, wherever they are from, should be happy and free from suffering. Because she is not normally involved in organising this type of event, it was not easy for her to begin with, but  [ Read More ]

An alternative conference was organised by the ‘Nuclear Free Now’ collective, in Koriyama, a town situated 55km from the Fukushima power plant, from 12th to 17th December 2012, in response to the ministerial meeting on nuclear safety organised for the same dates in the same town by the Japanese government and the IAEA. As the organisers of the alternative forum wanted a member of IndependentWHO to make a presentation on the WHO/IAEA Agreement and talk about our organisation’s activities, I took part in various events that ‘Nuclear Free Now’ had organised.   ~   In Tokyo, a preliminary meeting was  [ Read More ]

The World Health Organisation has failed in its obligation to protect the public and guilty of the crime of non-assistance. World Health Organisation subservient to nuclear lobby. The World Health Report (May 2012) entitled “Preliminary dose estimation from the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami” [1] is a public relations exercise to reassure the world that WHO is fulfilling its role in the area of radiation and health. Following the preliminary dose estimation, WHO will complete a health risk assessment to “support the identification of needs and priorities for public health action.” But this report  [ Read More ]

Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health was mandated by the United Nations to report on the health situation in Japan. He was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Health in June 2008. Since then, he has performed this role with particular attention to the most basic health rights of citizens of the world vis-à-vis powerful industries, the medical lobby or States trying to escape their responsibilities for health. In November 2012, after spending ten days in areas affected by the nuclear disaster at Fukushima-Daiichi, he presented his initial findings at a press conference  [ Read More ]

Helen Caldicott is an Australian anti-nuclear activist and physician, born in Melbourne in 1938. In 1982, she founded Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), and was very active in the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). She divides her time between the United States and Australia and gives lectures in order to make known her views about nuclear power. She gave a press conference in Tokyo November 19, 2012 about the medical consequences of Fukushima. It is, according to her, the

The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health from the UN Human Rights Council, Mr Anand Grover (India), will visit Japan from 15th to 26th November, 2012. This mission follows the visit to the UN in Geneva on 30th and 31st October by the Mayor of Futaba (Japan), Katsutaka Idogawa, and Toshio Yanagihara, a lawyer who represents children of Fukushima in a lawsuit demanding that the Japanese authorities evacuate them from the contaminated areas. The town of Futaba is located 3km from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant and is now uninhabitable. The visit by the Special Rapporteur was requested  [ Read More ]

An anti-nuclear city like Geneva, what a dream it must be for the Mayor of Futaba, a small Japanese town 3km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Futaba was wiped out by the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011. Because of the radioactivity the population will be unable to return for decades, if ever. The Mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa, came to Geneva at the end of October to testify at the UN Human Rights Council, along with Toshio Yanagihara, lead lawyer of the “Fukushima Collective Evacuation Trial”. Mayor Idogawa was received on 30 October by the Mayor of Geneva,  [ Read More ]

Returning from a ten-day trip to Japan, Dr. Michel Fernex denounces the silence and the lies which threaten those people contaminated by the disaster of Fukushima. What did you learn from your meetings with professors from the Faculty of Medicine, Fukushima ? I met four professors from the university, working in the departments of cardiology, urology, internal medicine and ophthalmology: doctors who all seem unaware of the medical conditions that are linked to contamination. They were very surprised to be finding cases of myocardial infarction, diabetes, and eye diseases among young patients. I told them about Professor Bandajevsky’s work in  [ Read More ]

Since 26th April 2007, IndependentWHO has held a Hippocratic Vigil every working day outside the WHO headquarters in Geneva, to remind this international organisation of its constitutional duty to ensure “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health”, which includes the area of health and radiation. The Scientific and Citizen Forum on Radioprotection, organised by IndependentWHO and held in Geneva on 12th and 13th May of this year, confirmed that in the case of Fukushima, just as with Chernobyl, the victims of nuclear disasters are currently unable to rely on the International Community, States or the  [ Read More ]