The World Health Organisation (WHO) is coming to grips with its biggest crisis, faced with criticism over its preliminary reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and with a financing cut from the United States.
Had actually worldwide governance been working as successfully as it ought to have, the world have reacted earlier and collectively. That it did not is an indictment, not so much of the WHO alone but of the member mentions that need it is beholden to them, states Shashi Tharoor, a previous Under Secretary General of the United Nations who spent 3 decades at the UN.
Tharoor, who is presently Congress Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, is also a previous Minister of State of External Affairs. Edited excerpts:
The WHO faced some criticism over its handling of the Ebola outbreak. In this instance, it is of a much higher magnitude. How extraordinary is the current challenge dealing with the WHO?
By and big, the consensus was the Ebola action was mostly effective. There were deaths however illness was consisted of to the area where it came from. Here you have an unmatched challenge. The WHO was developed in 1948 and there hasn’t been an around the world pandemic with this type of devastation that has actually discovered its path. Something like this is calamitously challenging for the WHO. And then you have the choice of the United States [on April 15] to withhold funding at this peak time. The U.S. contributes something like 15 percent of the WHO budget plan. That is a pretty significant sum of cash that is going to vanish from the WHO’s cat. All of that I believe adds to the difficulties it is facing.
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