(Image source from: vox.com)
With the growing inclination of WHO towards China, US President Donald Trump announced that they will be putting a hold on the funding towards WHO accusing it of its China centric during this time of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the White House conference that was held on Tuesday, Trump stated saying, “We're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see. It's a great thing if it works. But when they call every shot wrong, that's no good.”
The World Health Organisation , which is stationed in Geneva does receive a lot of its money from the United States.
Trump charged WHO saying that the organisation has been very critical and accusatory of the travel ban that Trump imposed on the country. He said that they have disagreed with a number of decisions that he has taken along the line, believing that they have been wrong about a lot of things that have been happening.
Trump believes that WHO has been very “China centric”.
Trump further added to it saying, “We give a majority of the money that they get, and it's much more than the USD58 million. USD58 million is a small portion of what they've got over the years. Sometimes they get much more than that. Sometimes it's for programs that they're doing, and-it's much bigger numbers. If the programs are good, that's great as far as we're concerned.”
But, the Trump administration has now decided to further look into it because Trump believes that they did it wrong. While it was possible for the WHO to call this months earlier than it did, the spread could have been contained a lot better. They are working on looking further into it and in the meantime, they are going to hold the money that they normally pay for WHO funding.
Senator Jim Risch, chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee has also called for an independent investigation stating that WHO has not just failed America but the entire world with the misreading surrounding the spread of the Covid-19.
Risch further allegedly stated saying, “Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' apparent unwillingness to hold the Chinese Communist Party to even the minimum standard of global health and transparency hindered the world's ability to blunt the spread of this pandemic. It is completely unacceptable that the world's global health organization has become a political puppet of the Chinese government.”
Owing to these misconducts, it is likely that there is going to be further independent investigation surrounding this to get a better and in-depth look into the situation.
Risch said that the valuable money that the taxpayers of the country are paying should always go to valuable hands instead of the cover-ups that they believe has been happening behind the scenes.
Even a bipartisan group consisting of two dozen lawmakers have announced the resolution of the funding of the WHO until the Director-General of the organisation, Tedros Ghebreyesus resigns.
Congressman Guy Reschenthaler alleged saying, “The WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party hide the threat of COVID-19 from the world and now more than 10,000 Americans are dead, a number that is expected to rise dramatically in the coming weeks.”
Further news and reports on the same have not been discussed or decided yet, so it is likely that the same will commence after the reports from the independent investigation has been completed.
By Somapika Dutta
