Trump threatens to halt WHO funding as US records highest death toll in a day
US president attacks ‘China-centric’ health body for failing to alert other countries fast enough
DONALD TRUMP has threatened to stop funding the World Health Organisation ( WHO) and accused it of being “China-centric” as the US saw the highest 24-hour rise in coronavirus deaths of any country.
The US president said the WHO, a global body that promotes healthcare and improves access to medicine, had “called it wrong” on the pandemic, appearing to suggest it failed to alert other countries quickly enough.
“We’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see,” Mr Trump said at a White House briefing on Tuesday evening.
He later backtracked when pressed by reporters, saying he had not yet decided to pause the funding but that “we’re going to look at it”. Such a move could harm the WHO’S ability to fund its projects in future. Last year the US contributed about $550 million (£443 million) – close to a tenth of the body’s total funding.
Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, criticised the threat yesterday. “This is not the time to cut back on funding,” Mr Kluge said. “We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic.”
Wading into the row, Downing Street said yesterday it continued to support the “role that the WHO is playing in coordinating the global health response to the pandemic.”
The PM’S spokesman added that there were no plans to review or cut off UK funding of the organisation.
Mr Trump’s frustration with the body seems in part to stem from its refusal to welcome his restrictions on travel from China earlier this year.
At the time the WHO issued a statement saying “restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions”.
Mr Trump has touted the decision as proof he understood the seriousness of the outbreak early and acted.
The president said of the WHO that “they seem to be very China-centric”, adding: “They seem to err always on the side of China. And we fund it. So I want to look into it.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, has seen his past praise of China’s leadership thrust into the spotlight.
Senior WHO figures yesterday rebutted Mr Trump’s “China-centric” charge, crediting China with working “very hard” to identify those infected and to restrict travel.
Critics have seen in the president’s broadside at a non-political body an attempt to deflect blame over his own administration’s handling of the crisis.
On Tuesday more than 1,800 people died from the virus in America – a figure higher than recorded in any other country for a 24-hour period. There are now more than 400,000 confirmed cases in the US and about 13,000 deaths.
Mr Trump has defended his administration’s record, at times marking his own performance as 10 out of 10, but pressure is mounting over whether he acted quickly enough to procure masks and other vital equipment.
The issue looks set to dominate the campaign for the US election, now seven months away.
In a separate development, new data has shown the African-american community is being disproportionately hit by coronavirus. In Chicago, AfricanAmericans make up around a third of the population but about 70 per cent of coronavirus-related fatalities. A similar ratio has been seen in Louisiana.
Mr Trump said the issue was a “real problem” which was showing up “strongly” in the data. Medical experts said inequalities in access to healthcare helped explain the issue.