TIRANA – US president Donald Trump’s decision to defund the World Health Organisation (WHO) was unjustifiable, the EU’s foreign policy chief has said as quoted by EUobserver on Thursday.
“Deeply regret US decision to suspend funding to WHO. There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever,” Josep Borrell said on Twitter on Wednesday. Trump explained his decision by accusing the WHO had helped China to cover up the outbreak.
In the meantime the WHO head on Wednesday defended its mission in fighting the coronavirus after President Trump halted US funding to the global health agency.
“The enjoyment of the highest standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said at a press briefing in Geneva, reciting the 75-year-old organization’s mission statement. “That creed remains our vision today.”
His comments came a day after Trump announced that he planned to withhold funding to the WHO for what he claimed were missteps in handling the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 2 million people worldwide and killed at least 129,000, including more than 26,000 in the United States, according to yahoo. news on Thursday.
“With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible,” Trump said at a Rose Garden briefing late Tuesday afternoon. “The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain and share information in a timely and transparent fashion.”
Trump has expressed annoyance that the WHO gets much more money from the US — $893 million over the past two years, roughly 10 percent of the organization’s budget — than from China, while it was allegedly complicit in China’s early attempts to hide the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump himself, however, initially praised China for its “transparency” about the disease, before more recently blaming the nation for allowing the pandemic to spread.
US funding to the WHO is appropriated by Congress.
“The United States of America has been a longstanding and generous friend to WHO, and we hope it will continue to be so,” Tedros said. “We regret the decision by the president of the United States to order a hold in funding to the World Health Organization.”
Tedros was named WHO director-general in 2017 after serving as Ethiopia’s health minister./argumentum.al
