The United States is suspending funding to the World Health Organization while the Trump administration studies what Donald Trump called the group’s “disastrous” role in “covering up” the outbreak of the coronavirus in China , the president has announced.
“The reality is the WHO failed to obtain, vet and share information in a timely fashion,” Mr Trump said. “The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable.”
“Tremendous amounts of time” were “lost” due to what Mr Trump called the WHO’s slowness. He is being accused of ignoring warnings from his own intelligence agencies of the virus’s severity, and his own plodding an ineffective response.
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Mr Trump accused the WHO on “opposing travel bans” and repeating Chinese government “propaganda” that the virus could not be transferred from person to person.
The US leader issues a mild threat to withdraw from the organization, which he rightly says is largely dependent on American monies, saying, “we’ll have no choice but to do that”, unless the group changes its actions .
His administration plans to redirect dollars meant for the WHO to work with countries on health issues “in other ways.” As usual, he did not describe what those “other” avenues might be.
He repeated his misleading statement that Washington sends the WHO “$ 823 m to $ 2019 m ”each year. Budget documents show it is closer to just over $ 500 m annually. There was no immedate response from the organization.
Hours before Mr Trump appeared in the Rose Garden and made the announcement at the start of his daily Covid – 100 briefing, congressional Democrats blasted his plan.
“Clearly, multiple failures at both the national and international level led to the pandemic disaster that we are facing today. As an international community, we must look critically at what went right and what went wrong in this global response, and learn from this so that we do not repeat the same mistakes again, ”said senator Jeff Merkley of
“It’s crucial that the United States is at the center of the discussion, not on the sidelines, as the international community determines what path the World Health Organization (WHO) takes moving forward,” he said. “Cutting back on America’s support and involvement will mean that the United States does not have a full seat at the table during these discussions, and will only magnify the already troubling influence of China at the WHO.”
For their part, senior WHO leaders have tried to resist a public spat with Mr Trump, saying simply that the midst of a pandemic is not the proper time for a funding fight.
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