WHO denies being “China-centric” after Trump comment
World Health Organisation officials denied that the body was “China-centric” yesterday and said that the acute phase of a pandemic was not the time to cut funding, after US President Donald Trump said he would put contributions on hold.
The United States is the top donor to the Geneva-based body which Trump said had issued bad advice during the new coronavirus outbreak.
US contributions to the WHO last year exceeded $400m (more than R7bn), almost double the second largest member state contribution. China, in contrast, contributed $44m ( R760m).
“We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding,” Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a virtual briefing in response to a question about Trump’s remarks.
Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO director-general, also defended the UN agency’s relationship with China, saying its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak which began in Wuhan.
“It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,” he said.
“This is what we did with every other hard-hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically.”
US President Donald Trump has sharply criticised the WHO, accusing it of being too focused on China on Tuesday.
“The WHO really blew it,” Trump tweeted.
“For some reason, funded largely by the US, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look.
“Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on.
“Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”
Trump repeated the accusations against the UN health organisation at a White House news briefing later on Tuesday.
“They called it wrong. They really — they missed the call,” he said.
“And 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.”
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric rejected the criticism of the WHO, which is led by director-general Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus. “For the secretary-general [Antonio Guterres], it is clear that the WHO, under the leadership of Dr Tedros, has done tremendous work on Covid in supporting countries with millions of pieces of equipment being shipped out, on helping countries with training, on providing global guidelines,” he said.
Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, vowed there would not be any funding for the the WHO in the next Senate appropriations bill.
“I’m in charge of the appropriations subcommittee.
“I’m not going to support funding the WHO under its current leadership.
“They’ve been deceptive, they’ve been slow and they’ve been Chinese apologists,” Graham said on Fox News.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, when asked about Trump’s remarks, said Tedros had played an important role in promoting international co-operation to combat the pandemic.
“China will continue to support the work of WHO in co-ordinating international efforts to counter the virus,” he said. —