The head of the World Health Organisation said Wednesday they regretted a decision by the United States to halt funding to the United Nations health body, adding a review was underway to assess the impact of the financing withdrawal.
“The United States of America has been a longstanding and generous friend to W.H.O. and we hope it will continue to be so,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva.
“We regret the decision of the president of the United States to order a halt in funding to the World Health Organization,” Tedros said, adding the organisation would work with its partners to fill any financial gaps “and to ensure our work continues uninterrupted.”
Nations and health experts worldwide reacted with alarm Wednesday after President Donald Trump announced a halt to the sizable funding the United States sends to the World Health Organization. They warned that the move could jeopardize global efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic.
At a briefing in Washington, Trump said he was instructing his administration to halt funding for the 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 US dollars and 500 million US dollars annually to the Geneva-based agency in recent years.
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.
Tedros cautioned that division would allow the virus to “exploit the cracks between us,” stressing “we are committed to serving the world’s people and to accountability for the resources with which we are entrusted.”
The WHO chief said Wednesday that the UN health body’s performance in tackling the pandemic would be reviewed in due course and identify room for improvement “but for now, our focus, my focus is on stopping this virus and saving lives.”
Worldwide, the pandemic has infected over 2 million people and killed over 128,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks. But it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death for some people, especially older adults and people with existing health problems.
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