[US president claimed WHO too willing to accept Chinese
explanations over coronavirus outbreak] [[link removed]]

MEMBER STATES BACK WHO AFTER RENEWED DONALD TRUMP ATTACK  
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Patrick Wintour and Julian Borger
May 19, 2020
The Guardian
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_ US president claimed WHO too willing to accept Chinese explanations
over coronavirus outbreak _

The WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at the WHO
headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. , Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

 

Member states have backed a resolution strongly supportive of the
World Health Organization
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Donald Trump issued a fresh broadside against the UN body, giving it
30 days to make unspecified reforms or lose out on US funding.

A resolution that backed the WHO’s leadership and said there needed
to be an investigation into the global response to the coronavirus
pandemic won endorsement at the WHO’s annual ministerial meeting on
Tuesday.

The US president launched his attack late on Monday, sending a lengthy
letter outlining America’s belief that the WHO had not been
sufficiently independent of China
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accept its explanations for the origins of the coronavirus outbreak.

As the pandemic worsens in the US, and other countries begin a
tentative recovery, Trump has sought to blame China and the WHO. The
letter accused the WHO of making repeated mistakes, meaning thousands
of lives had been lost, and America’s interests not served.

“If the WHO does not commit to major substantive improvements within
the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States
funding to the WHO permanent and reconsider our membership,” Trump
told its chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

His attack was timed to coincide with the start of the two-day World
Health [[link removed]] Assembly, which on
Tuesday finally backed a draft resolution that supported a
WHO-established independent and impartial inquiry into the WHO’s
conduct over the coronavirus.

The resolution, supported by China’s president, Xi Jinping, on
Monday and largely drafted by the European Union, stops short of the
kind of international inquiry focused on China’s conduct that was
first canvassed by Australia and the US. The Chinese foreign ministry
claimed the resolution was completely different from the politically
motivated inquiry sought by Australia.

Some claims in Trump’s letter were false, for example that Taiwan
had warned about human-to-human transmission of the disease on 31
December. On that date, Taiwan sent a letter to the WHO noting the
reported spate of unexplained pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China, and
that the patients were in isolation, and asking for further details.

China described Trump’s letter as slanderous and health experts said
Trump’s criticisms of the WHO could only be effectively addressed by
giving the WHO new powers over the health policies of nation states,
something Trump would resist if they were applied to the US.

The WHO leadership itself made no initial response to the Trump
letter, but the resolution that passed on Tuesday affirms the WHO’s
central role leading on global health. A subsidiary US attempt to
change the resolution’s wording on universal access to vaccines has
met resistance from African nations. The US wished to include language
on incentivising innovation that would give companies guarantees about
profits from vaccines.

The medical journal the Lancet, which was incorrectly mentioned in
Trump’s letter as having published a report on the virus in late
2019, issued a statement setting the record straight on Tuesday.

“This statement is factually incorrect,” the Lancet said. “The
Lancet published no report in December 2019, referring to a virus or
outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China … The allegations
levelled against the WHO in President Trump’s letter are serious and
damaging to efforts to strengthen international cooperation to control
this pandemic. It is essential that any review of the global response
is based on a factually accurate account of what took place in
December and January.”

EU diplomats, aware that the WHO has become a stage prop in Trump’s
re-election campaign, have been focusing on trying to minimise the
US-China clash at the assembly, and still hope the compromise
resolution can minimise the damage, and possibly pave the way for
Trump to delay a final break from the WHO.

In Brussels, the EU threw its weight behind the WHO, urging all
countries to support it in the wake of Trump’s continued attacks.
“This is the time for solidarity,” said the European
commission’s spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson. “It is not the
time for finger-pointing or undermining multilateral cooperation.

Welcoming what had been a victory for EU diplomacy, the bloc’s
foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, pointedly distanced himself from
Trump’s criticisms, saying: “The resolution underlines the
importance of responding to this crisis through solidarity and
multilateral cooperation under the umbrella of the United Nations. We
commend the WHO for its leading role in guiding the response to this
crisis.”

He reiterated the EU’s call for vaccine research to be shared and
said the WHO would hold a lessons learned inquiry.

The WHO regularly conducts reviews into its handling of major
epidemics, so the real battle if the US stays in the UN body would be
over issues such as the precise terms of reference and the identity of
the inquiry chair.

The loss of US funding to the WHO would be a severe blow since the US
contributed more than $400m to the WHO in 2019, or about 15% of its
budget. WHO funding is in need of reform since the overstretched body
is heavily dependent on one-off voluntary contributions from nations
and philanthropists such as the Gates Foundation. Many European states
share the desire to reform the WHO, but find Trump’s threats
counterproductive since they only entrench Chinese influence with
Africa, and make the reform cause harder.

Overall, China seemed content with the WHA’s direction, sensing that
the US tactics had left Trump increasingly isolated.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, described Trump’s
letter as slanderous. “The US leadership’s open letter is …
trying to mislead the public … to achieve the goal of smearing and
slandering China’s efforts in epidemic prevention and to shift
responsibility in its own incompetence in handling the epidemic,”
Zhao said.

The US decided not to resist the resolution, but put out a statement
disassociating itself from a section in the resolution that favoured
equal access to the intellectual property of any coronavirus
medicines, such as a vaccine.

At the White House Trump refused to back down, insisting the WHO will
“have to clean up their act, they have to do a better job. They have
to be much more fair to other countries, including the United States
or we’re not going to be involved with them and we’ll do it in a
separate way.”

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