President Trump has announced he is freezing all funding to the World Health Organisation, siting its incompetence, and cosying-up to China as justification for his actions.
In the daily press briefing held in the Rose Garden, President Trump said he would freeze all funding from the US ($500 million) to the World Health Organisation effective immediately. He attacked the WHO for being too 'China-centric' and accused it of swallowing Chinese misinformation. He also Said WHO had 'severely mismanaged the spread of coronavirus' and repeated that WHO opposed a ban on travellers from China coming to the US that he had initiated.
The United States is by far the largest funder of the WHO, paying in some $893million between 2018 and 2019 which made up around 15 percent of the agency's total budget during that period. More than France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Last week Trump said the US gives the World Health Organisation $500million per year, but that his administration was freezing it immediately, pending an investigation. Trump revealed a massive disparity in Countries funding of the WHO, including China who only donate around $40 million a year.
Trump has repeatedly blasted the WHO for being too China-centric, last week stating: “The WHO pushed China's misinformation about the virus saying it was not communicable and there was no need for travel bans.”
Trump went on to say: 'For the time we will redirect global health and directly work with others. All of the aid that we send will be discussed ... with very powerful and influential and smart groups, medically, politically and every other way,' Trump said. 'And we'll be discussing it with other countries and global health partners what we do with all that money that goes to WHO.' 'And maybe WHO will reform and maybe they won't,'
The WHO are a section of the United Nations, formed in 1947 to fight the spread of communicable diseases such as Covid-19. It is an organisation that appears to be unaccountable, inward looking and, in recent years, has become obsessed with political ideologies and Woke agendas. During this Coronavirus Pandemic, it repeated China’s Propaganda about them having the pandemic under control and, in doing so, wasted several weeks that have cost many thousands of lives and cost trillions of dollars. President Trump is right to pull the funding, we would go further than the President and push for the entire corrupt and incompetent agency to be disbanded.