The United States is set to restore the World Health Organisation's (WHO) funding, which it suspended last month. The Donald Trump administration is set to restore WHO's funding partially, to the tune of China's contribution to the world health body, as per a five-page draft letter accessed by Fox News. This comes a month after Trump ordered his administration to halt funding to the world health body, criticizing it for botching up the global coronavirus response and covering up for China.
"Despite [its] shortcomings, I believe that the WHO still has tremendous potential, and want to see the WHO live up to this potential, particularly now during this global crisis", the draft letter reads, Fox News reported. "That is why I've decided the United States will continue to partner and work with the World Health Organization". "We're told the president supposedly has agreed to sign the letter if he hasn't already", Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his show.
The draft letter called for "commonsense reforms of the WHO", which includes "a universal review mechanism to publicly report on member state compliance with International Health Regulations ... including timely and effective declarations of Public Health Emergencies of International Concern". Also, the WHO Director-General should be "insulated from political pressure in relation to public health decisions and participation in WHO meetings". It also called for "a fully independent assessment of the origin of this virus and the WHO COVID-19 response".
Management of coronavirus pandemic
On April 14, at the White House press briefing, Trump announced that he had instructed his administration to halt funding to the WHO. He also called for a review into WHO's management of the coronavirus pandemic. He slammed both China and the WHO for mismanaging the initial virus outbreak.
"Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China's lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death", he said, Reuters reported.
