World alarmed by US move
NATIONS and health experts worldwide reacted with alarm yesterday after President Donald Trump announced a halt to the sizeable funding the US sends to the World Health Organization. They warned that the move could jeopardise global efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic.
At a briefing in Washington, Trump said he was instructing his administration to halt funding for the WHO pending a review of its role “in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”.
The US is the WHO’s largest single donor, contributing between $400 million (R7bn) and $500m annually to the Geneva-based agency in recent years.
The WHO has been particularly effusive in its praise for China, calling on other countries to emulate its approach and repeatedly praising its transparency.
But China only agreed to a proposed WHO-led mission to investigate the coronavirus after WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus personally paid a visit to Chinese President Xi Jinping, a highly unusual move to secure a country visit during an outbreak.
The EU yesterday said Trump has “no reason” to freeze the WHO funding at this critical stage and called for measures to promote unity instead of division.
Trudie Lang, a professor of global health research at Oxford University, said attempts to hinder the WHO’s work could have significant consequences for the pandemic response.
“The reason we’re making such fast progress on diagnostics, vaccines and drugs is because of WHO’s role as a neutral broker,” she said.
“It’s their role to bring together the best science.”
On Twitter, Bill Gates – whose foundation was the second-largest donor to the WHO for its latest two-year budget, contributing over $530m in 2018 and 2019 – wrote that stopping funding for the WHO during a world health crisis “is as dangerous as it sounds”.
“Their work is slowing the spread of Covid-19 and if that work is stopped no other organisation can replace them. The world needs WHO now more than ever,” Gates wrote.
Worldwide, the pandemic has infected over 2 million people and killed over 128 000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.