US President Donald Trump threatened to freeze American funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), saying it "missed the call" on the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far killed more than 82,000 people around the world. Trump said on Tuesday the WHO was "very China-centric" in its approach, suggesting the UN agency had gone along with Beijing's efforts months ago to minimise the severity of the outbreak.
"The WHO really blew it," Trump said in a Twitter post.
Trump declared he would cut off funding from the United States for the organisation, before backtracking and saying he would "strongly consider" such a move. The United States is the top donor to the Geneva-based body. US contributions to WHO in 2019 exceeded $400m, almost double the second-largest member-state contribution. China, in contrast, contributed $44m.
'Now is not the time'
"We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding," Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, told a virtual briefing in response to a question about Trump's remarks. Dr Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO director general, also defended the UN agency's relationship with China, saying its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China.
"It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this," he told reporters. "This is what we did with every other hard hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically."
'Deceptive and slow'
Trump's conservatives allies have also increasingly criticised the WHO, accusing the organisation of relying on faulty data from China about the pandemic. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump, vowed there would not be any funding for the WHO in the next Senate appropriations bill.
"I'm in charge of the appropriations subcommittee. I'm not going to support funding the WHO under its current leadership. They've been deceptive, they've been slow, and they've been Chinese apologists," Graham said in an interview with Fox News.
Last week, Republican Senator Marco Rubio called for the resignation of WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying "he allowed Beijing to use the WHO to mislead the global community".
World Health Organization officials on Wednesday denied it was "China-centric" and said the acute phase of a pandemic was not the time to cut funding.