For the Record: The many twists to Trump’s war against WHO

By Kemi Kasumu and agencies

Suggestion that the West, particularly United States of America may not be in good state of mind with the low or no significant effect of Coronavirus pandemic among African countries may now have been confirmed with what played out in the last few days with US President Donald Trump’s threat to withhold its funds from World Health Organisation (WHO) on excuse of its handling of the pandemic globally, saying it was biased towards China.

Although the Trump’s threat was seen to be more of the fact that WHO did not show enough to recognize him as best performer in the anti-Coronavirus fight worldwide, it was gathered more that the race conscious American President was obviously showing his discrimination against the Director General of WHO in the person of Tedros Ghebreyesus, a former Ethiopian Minister Foreign Affairs, born Ethiopian and proudly African blood with nothing against other races of the world.

This was further revealed in the body language of both Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when they Wednesday repeated their criticisms against the body.

Pompeo said Washington was re-evaluating U.S. funding to WHO, saying international organizations utilizing U.S. taxpayer money needed to deliver on their goals without stating what the goals are but which many observers were to mean that WHO and any such organizations so claimed under United Nations sitting in America should serve no other interest except the interest of America, which they believe is insincerity at its peak.

In an interview with KDKA Radio, Pompeo’s body language suggested hate for WHO’s leadership by an African man when he found the excuse saying: “I think it’s pretty clear that the World Health Organization hasn’t lived up to its billing, it hasn’t been able to achieve what it was designed to achieve, and we just can’t continue to permit that to go on. We’ve got to find a way.”

This comment by Pompeo with the radio prompted him being asked Wednesday Coronavirus briefing whether the Trump’s administration was therefore considering a change of leadership in the global health body to which he swiftly replied: “This is not the time to be doing that kind of change.”

Although U.S. contributions to the WHO in 2019 exceeded $400 million, almost double the second-largest country donor, according to Washington’s figures, the WHO website shows the United States as its top donor, contributing nearly 15 percent of the budget.

Trump told daily White House briefing on the Coronavirus that Beijing’s payment was a small fraction of Washington’s WHO contribution, and that it was “not fair at all”.

The US President Trump said: “So, we’re going to do study, investigation. And we’re going to make a determination as to what we’re doing. In the meantime, we’re holding back. We … want to see,” he said, adding that the WHO issued a statement on January 14 saying “there was no human-to-human transmission” and criticized him “very strongly” when he said he was going to shut down flights from China.

In response to the U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticism and suggestions that Washington could review its funding for the agency, the WHO’s DG, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, fired back Wednesday giving a loud defence of his agency’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.

He called for unity and a halt to “politicization” of the global health crisis, specifically urging China and the United States to show “honest leadership”.

Tedros said he expected U.S. funding to continue with traditional bipartisan support.

Tedros said the WHO had “kept the world informed about the latest data, information and evidence” and noted that Thursday would mark 100 days since China first notified the organization of cases of “pneumonia with unknown cause” on December 31, 2019.

Tedros, a former foreign minister of Ethiopia, rejected Trump’s suggestion that the WHO was “China-centric”, saying: “We are close to every nation, we are colour-blind.”

While in Geneva on Wednesday, Tedros pleaded for global solidarity and national unity to fight the coronavirus pandemic when he was asked to comment on Trump’s criticism.

“For God’s sake, we have lost more than 60,000 citizens of the world, even one person is precious. What are we doing?” Tedros said.

He warned that nations will have “more body bags” if there are cracks at the national and global levels that allow the novel coronavirus to spread further.

“Please don’t politicize this virus. It exploits the differences you have at the national level,” he said. “If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it.

“Please quarantine politicizing COVID. If we want to win, we shouldn’t waste time pointing fingers,” he said.

“And now, the United States and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy,” he said, adding that the rest of the G20 and the rest of the world should come together to fight it.

Over the past few months, the WHO chief said that for the first time he has been targeted by racial remarks and even death threats.

“To me personally, I don’t mind. I prefer to really focus on saving lives,” he said. “Why would I care about being attacked when people are dying?”

Earlier, Dr Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to Tedros, also defended the U.N. agency’s relationship with China, saying its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak.

“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,” said Aylward, who led a WHO expert mission to China in February.