US's suspension of funding WHO is a threat to world's COVID-19 response

By Moses Mukuru

I am a regular follower of the White House COVID-19 task force daily briefings by US President Donald Trump and his team. In as far as the response in concerned in the US, in my view, his administration is doing everything possible to stop the massive deaths.

Given the scale of the crisis in the US, a daily update to the country and keeping hope alive is in order. However, I find his stance of blaming past administrations, his opponents, the World Health Organisation (WHO), China… for everything that is not going well during his daily briefings ill-advised.

I believe each time he comes to address US citizens; they are expectant to hear what the government is doing to quickly bring COVID-19 under control - at least for now!

In this article, I am only following up on his decision yesterday halting funding to WHO as the US investigates its operations.

Of course, we saw this coming, given that in the past days he has consistently accused WHO of being slow in declaring the COVID-19 a pandemic - which in his view has caused the current global crisis.

In fact, in his persistent criticism of the WHO, he seems to suggest possible collusion with the Chinese government to conceal the full scale of the COVID-19 problem - which he thinks denied the world better and timely preparation to avert the many deaths that continue to occur.

His decision yesterday reminded me of President Paul Kagame's comments in support of WHO a few weeks ago when this issue first came up. He called on world leaders to first stay focused on stopping the pandemic and then deal with such issues later.

Unless of course an issue affects the current spread and response efforts. At this point, LEADERSHIP is needed by any country and the world to keep a united front against the COVID-19 pandemic. With the new developments, I am afraid, the current US investigation and halting of funding to the WHO let alone the sustained targeted criticisms (rather than suggestions on what it should do to speed up the global response) can only disable WHO's global leadership in the response to COVID-19.

In my view, not even the US has indicated commitment to filling this vacuum which they are creating. I worry, this is likely to defeat the current concerted global efforts under the WHO leadership. With due respect, the concerns raised by the US government do not help the current response - they can actually be fully followed up after the response. So why the rush at this time!

So what should be done? Inevitably, the COVID-19 pandemic calls for a united global response. This can only work with effective global leadership which WHO is providing at the moment. In the current circumstances, member states should show solidarity and support to WHO (financial and moral support). Second, I believe WHO would definitely welcome any advice for improving the global response.

When we have finally overcome this threat to human existence in global history, we can revisit all the issues that we feel will make WHO better prepared for future responses - including addressing accountability issues.

As all leaders have said, let me reiterate - we are in this together, let us remain united and focused on bringing COVID-19 under control.

The views expressed in this article are personal opinions of the writer!

The writer is a public health policy PhD fellow at Makerere University School of Public Health currently attending the ErusmusPlus exchange fellowship at Nottingham Trent University - United Kingdom.