Coronavirus: Donald Trump’s threat to cut WHO funds ‘puts American interests at risk’
- An outbreak anywhere can be a problem everywhere, pandemic experts say after US president takes aim at the UN health body
- ‘China, not the WHO, should be held accountable’ for information supplied in the early days of the disease
Trump accused the WHO of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus” that causes the Covid-19 disease, and spreading the Chinese government’s “disinformation” in the early days of the outbreak.
Public health experts in the US and officials in several countries were quick to condemn the move. They said it jeopardised the health security of the US and was detrimental to the global fight against the pandemic caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus, for which there is no vaccine.
“Fighting a global pandemic requires international cooperation. When Sars-CoV-2 is permitted to circulate in human populations unabated anywhere, it threatens health security everywhere,” said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health programme at the non-profit Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
The US is the biggest financial contributor to the WHO, with its payments accounting for around 15 per cent of the organisation’s US$6.2 billion total budget over the last two years.