WHO Focused on Saving Lives, Says Chief After Trump Freezes US funding

The World Health Organization is purely focused on saving lives and halting the coronavirus pandemic, its chief said Wednesday after US President Donald Trump announced he was freezing funding for the WHO.

“There is no time to waste. WHO’s singular focus is on working to serve all people to save lives and stop the COVID-19 pandemic,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter following Trump’s decision.

Meanwhile, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chairman of the African Union Commission, said Wednesday that the decision by US President Donald Trump to freeze funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) amid the coronavirus pandemic is “deeply regrettable,”

“Today more than ever, the world depends on WHO’s leadership to steer the global #Covid_19 pandemic response. Our collective responsibility to ensure WHO can fully carry out its mandate, has never been more urgent,” Faki said in a Twitter post.

Trump charged that the outbreak could have been contained “with very little death” if the WHO had accurately assessed the situation in China, where the disease broke out late last year.

Africa has so far not been hit by the coronavirus as hard as other regions, but experts worry that weak health systems could quickly become overwhelmed by an influx of cases.

As of mid-Wednesday, there were 16,215 COVID-19 cases across all of Africa, resulting in 869 deaths, according to a toll compiled by AFP.