by Landis F.

May 1, 2020

The World Health Organization, or WHO, is a very important organization during this perplexing war with coronavirus. It provides healthcare to various countries around the world, helps to prevent communicable diseases such as Ebola and influenza, and researches different diseases by trying to find a cure and publishing data, reports, and fact sheets about new contagious viruses for an international audience. WHO also provides leadership and paths for research.  

Recently, President Trump cut funding to the World Health Organization, stating in a press conference that it made a “disastrous decision” to oppose the President’s restrictions on travel from China. He also said that the WHO put “political correctness above life-saving measures.” Then, Trump blamed the organization for creating “a 20-fold increase” in coronavirus cases. 

This action by the President was expected by many. Trump has repeatedly blasted the World Health Organization for having a bias in favor of China, even though the U.S. is the biggest funder of the group. Funding to the WHO will be frozen “for 60 to 90 days,” the president said, while U.S. officials review WHO’s response to the pandemic. The WHO failed in its “basic duty,” President Trump said. The World Health Organization’s budget is $4.8 billion and the United States contributes 15% of it-a pretty big slice of the budget

The president’s decision to cut funding to WHO has made business groups, Democrats, foreign leaders, and health groups furious. These different organizations have stated that Trump is jeopardizing the global response to the pandemic. 

While White House advisors agree with the President’s decision to cut funding, Congressional Democrats predictably clash with him. The top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and member of subcommittee on State Department and foreign operations, Patrick Leahy, said in regards to the president’s decision, “Withholding funds for WHO in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century makes as much sense as cutting off ammunition to an ally as the enemy closes in.” Leahy also said the White House had misunderstood the situation from the beginning, because it had compared the coronavirus to the common cold. 

The U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “It is my belief that the World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against COVID-19.” There is a common theme among the responses to Trump’s freezing the funding to WHO People who are speaking on the topic know that cutting funding will not help the war against COVID-19, and WHO is a very important organization during these unprecedented times.

The freezing of funding to WHO could cause great harm to the world’s population because the World Health Organization’s stated purpose is to develop a cure or a vaccine that could protect millions of people against the virus. Slashing the funds to WHO could cause the virus to spiral even more out of control than it is now. The virus could return to countries who have already successfully contained it, such as China, Singapore, South Korea, and Germany.

WHO plays a very big part in the fight against COVID-19, and Trump’s decision to

cut funding to the organization will not help the fight; it will only add to the fire. The longer the virus continues uncontained in so many countries around the world the more lives it will take. As citizens, we can do a lot to help our town by “sheltering in place,” but officials around the world need to unify and present a global initiative to defeat this pandemic instead of breaking apart and playing the blame-game. The virus is not going away. It is how we fight it in the future that is going to make a difference.