Under criticism for his handling of the Covid-19 outbreak at home, US President Donald Trump lashed out.
In a 7 April briefing, Trump said the WHO “could have called it months earlier. They would have known, and they should have known, and they probably did know, so we’ll be looking into that very carefully.”
Trump has repeatedly spoken of the ‘China virus’, and his surrogates have linked China’s support of the Ethiopian regime to the fact that the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is himself Ethiopian.
“Director-General Tedros is a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party”, said Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, linking the ascent of Tedros to China’s backing.
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| Coronavirus: Bill Gates Defends WHO From Trump, Gives $11 Million |
Having ‘paused’ US funding for the UN agency, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned on 23 April that it might never be restored.
Gates has been quick to defend the WHO, tweeting, “Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds”, much to the ire of Trump’s online legions.
“The WHO actually has a fairly modest budget. Its budget isn’t a thousandth of what is spent on healthcare in the United States”, Gates told The Africa Report in an interview.
“So sometimes people expect it has capabilities beyond what it’s actually funded to do”, says Gates. “Some people think [the] WHO is funded to make new drugs, vaccines, and it’s not at all, it’s actually got a pretty modest staffing level.”
He points out that the WHO is the only platform where a global pandemic can be debated, understood, and where evidence and information can be shared. Gates also has little time for criticising China’s response, calling it ‘a distraction’. www.theafricareport.com
