Donald Trump has accused the World Health Organization of being a puppet of China and has threatened to pull all U.S. funding and remove the nation’s membership. Trump on Monday called WHO a “puppet of China.“
CNN reports: “In a letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Trump said, ‘It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China. My administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste.’ The threat comes at a remarkable time. The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 90,000 Americans and more than 318,000 people worldwide as of late Monday and, while there are promising signs from some vaccine trials, there is no cure for the virus.”
“The WHO would lose a significant chunk of its funding if the US stopped sending payments or withdrew entirely from the organization. Whether other nations would increase their contributions to plug the gap remains to be seen, but it is clear that other world leaders would be concerned about the prospect — particularly given the state of the Covid-19 pandemic,” CNN adds. “The US would also be left with less access to WHO resources as it fights its coronavirus outbreak, and little say on how the WHO operates, if it stopped being a member state. Given the size of its contributions, it is currently a major player within the organization.”
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