In 1996, the WHO lost international industry leads coordination of the response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, entrusting it to a specific organization, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), considered to be in a better position to provide necessary multi industry leads sectoral response (including economic aspects, human rights, gender, etc.). In 2003, the WHO was criticized for having delayed in warning of the existence of a SARS (severe acute respiratory industry leads syndrome) epidemic, due to the concealment of the first cases by the
Chinese authorities (an international industry leads alert was launched only in March 2003, when there were rumors about the first patients in November 2002). In the case of H1N1 in 2009, the WHO was criticized for having declared an H1N1 flu pandemic too industry leads quickly, which caused the purchase by the States of millions of doses of vaccines that were ultimately useless, since the virus turned out to be not very virulent. In 2014, during the Ebola industry leads epidemic in West Africa, the WHO was instead accused of having declared an international emergency too late, in
August, after acknowledging that the industry leads number of cases had been largely underestimated until then (when Doctors Without Borders had warned about the seriousness of the situation in the boreal spring of 2014). This time, in the case of Covid-19, the WHO industry leads declared an international public health emergency situation on January 30, 2020 (which allows calling for international mobilization), then a pandemic on March 11 (due to the increase industry leads number of cases and countries affected).