Coronavirus: Trump threatens to slash US funding to World Health Organisation
- President Buhari has threatened to slash US funding to WHO over COVID-19
- Coronavirus has posed a big threat to all countries in the world including the world powers
- Trump, however, said that WHO was "very China-centric" in its approach to coronavirus
President Donald Trump of the United States of America has threatened to freeze the country's funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO), saying it "missed the call" on the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far killed more than 82,000 people around the world.
Aljazeera reports that that Trump said on Tuesday, April 7, the WHO "called it wrong" on the coronavirus and that the UN organisation was "very China-centric" in its approach, suggesting the 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.
According to the report, 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.
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.
A Republican senator, Marco Rubio, had called for the resignation of WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying, "he allowed Beijing to use the WHO to mislead the global community."
"For the secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, it is clear that WHO, under the leadership of Tedros has done tremendous work on COVID-19 in supporting countries with millions of pieces of equipment being shipped out, on helping countries with training, on providing global guidelines. WHO is showing the strength of the international health system," he told reporters.
He added the WHO also recently did "tremendous work" in putting its staff on the frontlines to successfully fight Ebola, an infectious and often fatal disease, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The WHO did not respond to a request for comment on Trump's derogatory remarks.
The WHO has praised China for its transparency on the virus, even though there has been some reason to believe that more people died of the disease, also known as COVID-19, than the country's official tally.
"They should have known and they probably did know," Trump said of WHO officials.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has voiced skepticism towards many international organisations and has repeatedly heaped scorn on the WHO.
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Reports had suggested the US had more confirmed cases of the coronavirus than any country in the world, surpassing China, where the pandemic began.
It was reported that there were more than 85,000 cases in America and nearly 1,300 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. China was second with 81,285 cases, and Italy was third with 80,539 cases.
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