World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked diplomats in a closed-door meeting last week to pressure President Donald Trump to reverse his decision to exit from the U.N. health agency.
According to minutes of the meeting published by the Associated Press (AP) on Monday, Tedros “rebutted” Trump’s three stated reasons for pulling out of W.H.O. with an executive order on his very first day back in office: W.H.O.’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, its failure to adopt reforms, and the “unfairly onerous payments” demanded from the United States.
Tedros went on to show his audience a presentation that made it clear American shoulders a wildly disproportionate share of the budget for W.H.O. – covering 80 percent of the cost of “readiness functions” even in W.H.O.’s European office, 95 percent of tuberculosis programs in Europe, and 60 percent of tuberculosis work in Africa – which would seem to rebut the director’s rebuttal of Trump’s complaint about onerous payments.
Tedros nevertheless insisted he was more concerned about the “void” in critical health information from the United States than the loss of American funding.
“Bringing the U.S. back will be very important, and on that, I think all of you can play a role,” he told the assembled diplomats.
“We continue to give them information because they need it. We would appreciate it if you continue to push and reach out to them to reconsider,” he said.
The AP report included no mention of any other nation stepping forward to make up for the loss of U.S. funding.
Trump said shortly after withdrawing from the W.H.O. that he would consider rejoining, but only if they “clean up” their operation and address his complaint about other nations, especially gigantic plague-spreading China, paying only a fraction of what the United States does.
As for reforms, W.H.O. is far better at talking about them than actually implementing them, as even some critics of Trump’s withdrawal concede. Those critics argue the United States should push for long-delayed and much-needed reforms instead of pulling out, but America’s gigantic financial contributions appear to have given it very little leverage over W.H.O.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.