Who's WHO?

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) , Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, defended the WHO's work and called for an end to the politicisation of Covid-19.

Trump accused the WHO of being "very China-centric". Trump said the WHO appeared to be "very biased toward China". 

Dr Tedros has dismissed the comments, insisting: "We are close to every nation, we are colour-blind."

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres  added his voice to the defence of the organisation.

"Now is the time for unity, for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences," he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron also reportedly offered his support to the World Health Organization in a call to Dr Tedros on Wednesday.

"He reaffirmed his trust, his support for the institution and refuses to see it locked into a war between China and the USA," a French presidency official told  Reuters.

The World Health Organization has a tiny budget – for which the US is in about $200m in arrears in assessed contributions (national membership fees) albeit it has given more in donations, and was the biggest single donor in 2019 – certainly far more than China.

But the US is far from providing the majority of the WHO’s funds, as Trump claimed, and its voluntary contributions have largely been tied to specific projects. WHO’s total annual budget is about $2.5bn, and contributions from member states have not significantly increased over three decades.

“The WHO’s budget is around the equivalent of a large US hospital, which is utterly incommensurate with its global responsibilities,” said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law professor at Georgetown University and director of the WHO centre on global health law. “To blame the WHO for acting on the basis of international law and science in ways that are entirely consistent with what WHO practices have been for decades is the height of hypocrisy,” he said.

On the same day Trump was confidently predicting the coronavirus did not present a serious threat to the US, assuring Americans: “It’s going to have a very good ending” Tedros declared a “public health emergency of international concern” , calling on governments to pursue containment and testing efforts.

Gavin Yamey, the director of Duke University’s center for policy impact in global health, said: “If the United States had followed the WHO’s very clear advice on identifying cases, isolating cases and conducting contact tracing, then it wouldn’t be in the appalling situation that it is in today.”

By the time Trump’s travel ban was announced, it was far too late to stop the virus entering the US. It was already rampant in US communities, but Trump continued to tell Americans that the outbreak would not affect them, and wholesale US testing failed to get off the ground for another six weeks.

Amanda Glassman, the executive vice-president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said a deeper problem is the WHO’s low budget and relatively toothless structure. Unlike the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has no redress against governments that do not cooperate.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/world-health-organization-coronavirus-donald-trump