Countries around the world are reacting with alarm after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a halt to the sizable funding his country sends to the World Health Organization.
Countries around the world reacted with alarm Wednesday after President Donald Trump announced a halt to the sizable funding the United States sends to the World Health Organization. Health experts warned the move could jeopardize global efforts to stop the COVID-19 pandemic.
At a briefing in Washington, Trump said he was instructing his administration to halt funding for WHO pending a review of its role “in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.” The United States is WHO’s largest single donor, contributing between $400 million and $500 million US annually to the Geneva-based agency in recent years.
“We regret the decision of the president of the United States to order a halt in the funding to the WHO,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday at a news briefing.
He went on to say that the organization will assess what impact the withdrawal will have on their work, and then “try to fill any gaps with partners.”
Trump has repeatedly labelled COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and criticized the UN health agency for being too lenient on China, where the novel virus first emerged late last year.
Outside experts have questioned China’s reported infections and deaths from the virus, calling them way too low and unreliable. An investigation by The Associated Press has found that six days of delays between when Chinese officials knew about the virus and when they warned the public allowed the pandemic to bloom into a public health disaster.
International pushback
The European Union on Wednesday said Trump has “no reason” to freeze WHO funding at this critical stage and called for measures to promote unity instead of division. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the 27-nation bloc “deeply” regrets the suspension of funds, adding that the UN health agency is “needed more than ever” to combat the pandemic.
“Only by joining forces can we overcome this crisis that knows no borders,” said Borrell.
The EU has increasingly been critical of the Trump administration over the past years.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he sympathized with Trump’s criticisms of the WHO, especially its “unfathomable” support of reopening China’s “wet markets,” where both live and freshly slaughtered animals are sold.
“That said, the WHO, as an organization, does a lot of important work including here in our region in the Pacific and we work closely wi