(Minghui.org) By ignoring serious warnings from Taiwan and repeating disinformation favored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the World Health Organization (WHO) has effectively facilitated the quick spread of the coronavirus to the whole world.
Now the world is moving to hold the WHO accountable for its actions.
On April 14, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the country will halt funding for the WHO, a week after criticizing the organization for its mishandling of the pandemic and being very “China-centric.”
Around the same time, politicians in the U.K. called for the formation of a “G20 for Public Health” to replace the WHO to help cope with the global crisis.
Ignoring Important Warnings from Taiwan
Health officials in Taiwan alerted the WHO on December 31, 2019 about the risk of human-to-human transmission of the virus. However, the WHO ignored the concern and did not warn other countries.
Throughout January, the WHO praised China’s quick response to the outbreak and insisted that there was no human-to-human transmission.
On January 29, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said after a trip back from Beijing that China’s actions “actually helped prevent the spread of coronavirus to other countries” and that “China deserves gratitude and respect.”
A report by the Financial Times titled “Taiwan says WHO failed to act on coronavirus transmission warning” pointed out, “Taiwan is excluded from the WHO because China, which claims it as part of its territory, demands that third countries and international bodies do not treat it in any way that resembles how independent states are treated.”
Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said in his speech in Parliament on March 26, “Early on, if the WHO had not insisted to the world that China had no pneumonia epidemic, then everybody would have taken precautions.”
U.S. Senator Martha McSally called for the resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who became WHO’s director-general in the summer of 2017 with China’s help.
U.S. Calls Out China’s Manipulation of WHO
When President Trump brought up the possibility of halting U.S. funding to the WHO on April 7, the next day WHO officials rejected his claim that the organization was “China-centric” and said “the acute phase of a pandemic was not the time to cut funding.”
A week later on April 14, Trump announced that his administration will halt funding to the WHO for its mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak.
According to a Reuters report, the United States is the largest donor to the Geneva-based body. “U.S. contributions to WHO in 2019 exceeded $400 million, almost double the 2nd largest country donor, according to figures from the U.S. State Department. China contributed $42 million.”
President Trump said during the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefing on April 8, “[WHO said] everything was going to be fine, no human to human, keep the borders open. He wanted me to keep the borders open. I closed the borders despite him, and that was a hard decision to make at the time.”
At the same briefing, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added, “We need the World Health Organization to do its job, to perform its primary function, which is to make sure that the world has accurate, timely, effective, real information about what’s going on in the global health space. And they didn’t get that done here.”
Peter Navarro, the White House economic advisor, told Fox News on April 8, “What China has been doing very aggressively over the last decade is to try to gain control of [UN specialized agencies] by electing people to the top. It already controls five of the 15, also, by using proxies, colonial-like proxies, like Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus] at the WHO.”
Other than the WHO, the other four organizations controlled by the CCP include the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (ONUDI), International Telecommunication Union (UIT) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Navarro further added, “As you can see in this crisis, the damage [done by] that kind of control by China [of] the key health organization has been absolutely enormous. They suppressed the human to human transmission [data], they refused to call it a pandemic. They basically discouraged travel bans.”
“It all tracks to China’s view of the world and how they want to control different types of international organizations, even as they don't play by the international rules,” he said.
Navarro noted “China’s attempt to control basically every organization within the United Nations for their colonial powers, through bribery and other things,” which has caused tremendous damage to the world.
U.K. Calls for Forming of “G20 for Public Health”
“Such deliberate misleading of the WHO and scientists in other countries obscured analysis in the critical early stages of the pandemic,” said an official report published by the U.K. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on April 6, 2020, titled “The FCO’s role in international efforts to combat COVID-19.” The report criticized how the WHO misguided the world in the war against the virus.
“It is clear that existing regional and multilateral organisations, including the WHO, are not achieving the international co-operation needed to fight a global pandemic.” said the report.
To prevent the WHO’s disastrous coping mechanisms from happening again, the report suggests “[the Government] must also work closely with allies to present a united front where possible, and to help ensure that vital international research efforts are not compromised by propaganda and bad data.”
“A ‘G20 for Public Health’, for example, could ensure that co-operation between expert researchers across the globe can flourish, even in the absence of united political leadership.”
Related reports in Chinese:
Category: Perspective
