President Donald Trump’s pledge to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) while the White House reviews its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak has drawn immediate criticism from the health community.
“We must all be allies against this threat; this is not the time to stand alone,” a group of infectious disease leaders said in a joint statement on Wednesday. “Global coordination and cooperation will be critical to ensure the necessary surveillance, monitoring, detection, prevention, research and responses to fight this new infectious disease threat to which no nation alone has the means to defend itself,” said the members of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, its HIV Medicine Association, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists.
The group noted that WHO provides technical and scientific expertise in countries with limited resources with services that are essential to containing the impacts of infectious disease threats, and that the ability of the United States to protect its people depends on those efforts. The WHO also has the ability to mobilize global research and effective sharing of data to help fight COVID-19 and future pandemics.
Trump has in recent days placed blame for the pandemic, which has infected more than 2 million people worldwide and led to the deaths of more than 128,000 since its discovery in December 2019, on the WHO for what he characterized as pushing China’s misinformation about the virus. Since the United States is the WHO’s leading sponsor, the president said it has a duty to hold the organization accountable through a review process that could take up to 90 days.
“Today I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” Trump said in a White House briefing Tuesday.
In the meantime, that will leave the largest health organization in the world struggling at the same time it is calling for greater cooperation. The U.S. contributed around $553 million to the WHO’s multibillion-dollar budget last year.
“There is no time to waste,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted earlier Wednesday. “WHO’s singular focus is on working to serve all people to save lives and stop the #COVID19 pandemic.”
Trump’s own response to the pandemic has been under heavy scrutiny, and in return, he has accused the WHO of being too China-centric. The Trump administration quickly imposed travel restrictions on China after the outbreak first emerged, and frequently cited it as a lifesaving decision.
The latest action has gained the president still more critics, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates among them.
“Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds,” Gates said in the wake of Trump’s announcement. “Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs WHO now more than ever.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the WHO’s largest donors. Gates himself has been vocal about the need to maintain social distancing and other health measures during the ongoing pandemic, and earlier this year, the foundation pledged up to $100 million to help contain the novel coronavirus.
Others, including the head of the public policy research organization Center for American Progress, delivered a sharp rebuke of Trump’s action.
“Attempting to cut funding for the WHO during a global pandemic is the latest example of President Trump making a horrific problem worse,” Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, said. “America should be boosting international organizations such as the WHO that are helping the world fight the pandemic – not undermining them.”
The U.S. alone has more than 609,000 confirmed cases of the disease, exceeding the nearest other nation by more than 400,000 cases. More than 26,000 people in the U.S. have died as a result.
“The president should be spending his time solving the public health threat that has crippled the U.S. economy,” Tanden said. “Instead, he is engaged in a game of charades to change the conversation away from the fact that he spent months downplaying the threat coronavirus posed to the American people as well as to divert attention from his failure to deliver the testing capacity needed to reopen the economy and the lifesaving equipment that front-line health care workers have been pleading for to do their jobs safely.”