Remarks follow Donald Trump’s threat to stop funding the global health agency
The head of the World Health Organization has hit back after Donald Trump threatened to stop funding the health agency at the centre of global action against Covid-19, saying politicising the coronavirus pandemic will lead to “many more body bags” and is like “playing with fire”.
The United States president said at a White House press briefing on 7 April that he was considering pulling funding because the WHO was “China-centric”.
In an impassioned response, the agency’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on 8 April that he didn’t think it was necessary to address Trump’s accusations directly. But many of his statements did appear to be thinly-veiled attacks on the US president’s actions during the outbreak.
“Please don’t politicise this virus. It exploits the differences you have at the national level,” Ghebreyesus said.
He added, “If you don’t want many more body bags then you refrain from politicising it. The unity of your country will be very important to defeat this dangerous virus…This is not the one to use for politics. It’s like playing with fire.”
Later, Ghebreyesus thanked the US for its generosity and said that resources “will not be a problem” if there is global solidarity in tackling Covid-19.
“In the US, supporting global health has been a bipartisan position,” Ghebreyesus said. “What I believe is that it will continue that way.”
Countries contribute to the WHO budget through membership fees and voluntary contributions. The US pays the highest membership fees but is currently $99 million in arrears.
Earlier this week, a former top official at the World Health Organization said Donald Trump’s threat to pull his country’s funding of the global agency would be “disastrous” if carried out. David Heymann, who was previously the WHO’s assistant director-general for health security and environment, told journalists at a press briefing on 8 April that the international health body “works on a shoestring budget” and would be unable to continue its work if it loses funding.
In his opening remarks, Ghebreyesus said that more than $800m additional funding for the WHO has been pledged or received since the beginning of the crisis, including $140m from non-governmental sources through the WHO’s ‘Solidarity Response Fund’.
He also revealed that 130 scientists, funders and manufacturers had committed to work with the WHO “to speed the development of a vaccine against Covid-19”.
The WHO has been criticised by politicians in the United States and some other countries for being too ready to accept China’s reporting of the coronavirus outbreak in its early stages.
When questioned on this, Ghebreyesus refrained from responding directly but said “the United States and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy”.
“When there are cracks at national level and global level, that’s when [the] virus succeeds. For God’s sake, we have lost more than 60,000 citizens of the world,” he said. “We don’t do politics in the WHO.”
The director-general also revealed for the first time that he had been receiving death threats and racist abuse, saying “I don’t give a damn”.