World Health Organization officials on Wednesday denied that the body was \u201cChina-centric\u201d and said that the acute phase of a pandemic was not the time to cut funding, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would put contributions on hold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States is the top donor to the Geneva-based body which Trump said had issued bad advice during the new coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. contributions to WHO in 2019 exceeded $400 million, almost double the second largest country donor, according to figures from the U.S. State Department. China contributed $44 million, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding,\u201d Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a virtual briefing when asked about Trump\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO Director-General, also defended the U.N. agency\u2019s relationship with China, saying its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak which began in Wuhan in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is what we did with every other hard-hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aylward, who led a WHO expert mission to China in February, defended WHO recommendations to keep borders open, saying that China had worked \u201cvery hard\u201d to identify and detect early cases and their contacts and ensure they did not travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cChina worked very, hard very early on, once it understood what it was dealing with, to try and identify and detect all potential cases to make sure that they got tested to trace all the close contacts and make sure they were quarantined so they actually knew where the virus was, where the risk was,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThen they made it very clear that these people would not and could not travel within the country, let alone internationally,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been lavish in his praise of China from early in the outbreak, praising President Xi Jinping\u2019s \u201crare leadership\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Heymann, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who led WHO\u2019s response to the 2003 SARS outbreak, said that any U.S. funding cut would be a huge blow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf the WHO loses its funding it cannot continue to do its work. It works on a shoe-string budget already,\u201d Heymann said in London. \u201cOf course it would be disastrous for the WHO to lose funding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World Health Organization officials on Wednesday denied that the body was \u201cChina-centric\u201d and said that the acute phase of a pandemic was not the time to cut funding, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would put contributions on hold. The United States is the top donor to the Geneva-based body which Trump said had …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-te-public"],"yoast_head":"\n