US President Donald Trump has halted US funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO) amid this coronavirus outbreak citing worries over ‘disinformation’ by WHO, while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has voiced his concerns over WHO’s poor response and politicization of the COVID-19 crisis. On the flip side, the Republic of Ireland has announced that they will quadruple their WHO funding to combat the COVID-19 crisis following Trump’s declaration of halting US funding. Some experts worry that WHO could become a divisive and polarising organisation after the SARS-CoV-2 crisis leading to its downfall but is it likely?
Since December 31st (when China first informed WHO about rising pneumonia cases in Wuhan), WHO has been issuing warnings to the world about the dangers of the novel unknown disease. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus continued holding regular press briefings to provide updates on the outbreak in China and declared the outbreak a pandemic on 11th of March after SARS-CoV-2 began spreading outside of Asia. In the mean time, WHO has been offering recommendations such as restricting international travel and issuing social distancing guidelines, while also promoting the sharing of data between countries so that a vaccine or cure can be developed – WHO themselves are funding research for a vaccine and cure too.
The primary criticisms of WHO are that their pandemic declaration came too late and that they were too trusting and not critical enough of China’s handling of the virus. Senior Scholar at John Hopkins University, Amesh Adalja said that both criticisms have some validity to them and WHO may need some reforms to deal with them. However, he did warn that now is not the time to address the criticisms especially by making political statements – referring to Donald Trump’s criticism of WHO and halting of US funding.
Other experts argue that WHO’s declaration of pandemic was fine and that some people will never be satisfied with the timing of declaration, citing the H1N1 outbreak in 2009 when WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic after it began spreading outside North America – the declaration was deemed ‘too early’ by many. Political scientists argue that WHO’s role in dealing with health crises and in world politics is a neutral one.
After the SARS and Ebola crisis, WHO went through major reforms whereby its role was reduced to coordinating efforts with states in order to deal with major health crises. This meant that WHO would ensure that countries are working together to find a cure, vaccine, share information, provide aid, and approve testing so that coordinated decisions can be made such as mutual cancellation of travel between two states. The role of WHO is one of a ‘middle man’ and it means it must stay non-political and trust that states share the information to the best of their ability – which WHO has abided by. Some political scientists feel that Trump is hypocritical in his criticism of WHO since in January 2020, he also commended the Chinese Government for their handling of the COVID-19 crisis just like the WHO did.
Another criticism of WHO has been that it ignored Taiwan’s warning of human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in January and has failed to appreciate Taiwan’s efforts in dealing with COVID-19. However, the issue is complicated since UN recognises Taiwan as a part of China so when WHO praise China for dealing with SARS-CoV-2 effectively, they are in part appreciating Taiwan’s efforts too. Since WHO is an agency working under UN, it has to abide by its laws too. As for Taiwan’s warning of human-to-human transmission, the WHO received no such warning and Taiwan has not responded to WHO’s call for proof of such a claim.
WHO’s Director General Tedros has come under major scrutiny for WHO’s handling of COVID-19 crisis. Key political figures in the West have even gone as far as requesting him to resign or to be removed, while African leaders have shown their support for Tedros by requesting other nations to not politicise the issue right now.
Complaints and criticisms of Tedros go as far back as the Ebola outbreak. As the Ebola outbreak worsened in Congo and spread to neighbouring nations like Uganda, many states called the WHO to declare the outbreak a pandemic but Tedros denied it stating that the disease was under control. It has remained under control since that exchange happened. As for his response to the SARS-CoV-2 crisis, he has been accused of siding with China and responding too slowly to the crisis. As the Head of WHO, Tedros was always going to receive severe criticism for any crisis regardless of whether he is right or wrong.
The first formal global organisation was the League of Nations and many other organisations worked under it including League of Nations Health Organisation (the WHO of the time). League of Nations famously collapsed after the end of World War II, but its collapse had been predicted years before that. The reason for its collapse was a lack of military force and its inability to deal with moments of aggression by states such as Germany. Consequently, once League of Nations collapsed, all the agencies working under it collapsed too including the League of Nations Health Organisation.
Soon after (in 1948), the United Nations was formed and along with it many other agencies including the WHO. As you know, both organisations continue to exist, and they do so because they both have gone through many reforms time after time.
Trump’s decision to suspend US funding of WHO will be a massive loss to the WHO and global efforts to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and other health issues. US contributes to roughly 15% of WHO’s total budget and in 2019, contributed $553 million. Although a majority of US funding goes towards non-emergency causes, stopping funding to such causes could result in indirect health crises and deaths besides those from COVID-19. Major health campaigns which could take a hit would be the efforts to end polio in less developed countries and the campaign to limit the spread of H1N1 in several countries.
The consensus appears to be that Trump’s decision to stop US funding to WHO is an impulse decision and although Trump could have some validity to his arguments, now was not the time to take such dividing actions. Experts have praised Shinzo Abe’s decision to continue WHO funding but analysing and taking any further decisions on funding only after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is over.
Several political scientists had predicted that leaders of nations would point fingers at WHO, China or Tedros among other figures and organisations, and that a scapegoat would be needed to divert blame. With the general elections coming up in many nations in the next couple of years including the US, UK and Japan, it was expected that the incumbent governments of these nations would be critical of everyone else but themselves and their own response to SARS-CoV-2. The economic and social impact of SARS-CoV-2 will cause the ruling party and leaders to lose plenty of support, so it is normal that they would try to relieve pressure on themselves in order to satisfy voters.
It is highly unlikely that the WHO will collapse. Most probably, WHO will go through several reforms before things return to normal and funding resumes as it has happened many times in the past when WHO has been criticised. However, WHO Director General Tedros could be used a scapegoat in the situation and possibly be forced to resign or be removed, but even that seems unlikely as most health experts agree that WHO has worked much better under Tedros than his predecessors.
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