The World Health Organization has brought out openly the names of the experts who had ties with pharmaceutical industry and gave advice to the UN agency that the swine flu had taken the shape of an epidemic.

Of the 15 specialists that the WHO brought in to assign the H1N1 outbreak a pandemic, six of them claimed potential conflicts of interest, which included receiving help from the pharmaceutical industry and vaccine-makers.

As per a list posted on the UN health agency’s website, the specialists belonged to the fields of epidemiology, public health, international air travel and health and visited various countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America.

The names on the list comprise Dr. Claude Thibeault , who is a consultant medical adviser to the International Air Transport Association in Montreal; Nancy Cox, from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control; Arnold Monto, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan; Professor Maria Zambon of the U. K. health protection agency Centre for Infection and Professor Neil Morris Ferguson, acting as envoy for firms Roche and GSK Biologicals till the year 2007.

Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO Director General, said that H1N1 pandemic was formally over on Tuesday.