The United States of America has become the new hub of COVID-19 as it has surpassed China, the epicentre of the virus in the number of infected cases.
Presently, there are over 6,50,000 cases of Coronavirus in the States and they are expected to grow from here.
Amid the rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in America, Donald Trump has presented the freezing of US funding to the World Health Organization.
This is his direct response to what he believes is the slow reaction in part of the WHO in raising alarm over the global threat. He claims that the WHO was too “China-centric” in its response.
In a White House briefing, he said:
Today I’m instructing my administration to stop funding of the WHO while a review is conducted to assess the WHO’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.
Earlier, when Trump was hitting at WHO’s inefficiency and bias, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO had appealed to him to not “politicize the matter”. He had said:
If you want to be exploited and if you want to have many more body bags, then you do it. If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it.
And this is not the first time, he is having a difficult time dealing with WHO or health services in general. On 7th February, his administration had suggested that the US contribution $400m be slashed to half.
This might affect the funding of the WHO by a lot. The USA provided under 15 per cent of the WHO”s budget in the year 2018-19. While the USA is the largest donor, there are many organizations, such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who would be willing to fill the gap left by the USA.
However, this will happen only in the short term, and the organization would have a tough time surviving in the long run without the USA’s financial support.