US President Donald Trump sent a letter to the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Gebreyesus, in which he criticized the behavior of WHO in connection with the spread of COVID-19 and threatened to stop financing the organization.
“If the World Health Organization does not commit itself to large-scale and substantial improvements over the next 30 days, I will make my decision to temporarily suspend US contributions to the WHO budget permanent and review our membership in this organization,” the text says. .
According to Trump, the only option for WHO to continue is to "demonstrate its independence from China." The owner of the White House said that he could not allow American taxpayers to finance an organization that in its current state "so obviously does not serve the interests of the United States."
In his letter, Trump listed a number of steps taken by WHO during the spread of a new type of coronavirus, which, in his opinion, were incorrect. The American leader also accused the organization of publishing false information and criticized the position taken by WHO in relation to China.
Recall that in mid-April, the US president announced the suspension of WHO funding from Washington, accusing the organization of hiding information about the spread of coronavirus. A month later, Trump allowed the possibility of resuming WHO funding from the United States, but only in the amount of 10% of the previous tranches.
“This is just one of the many ideas that we are considering, and in this case we will pay 10% of what we paid for many years, then this will correspond to the level of payments to China, which are much lower. No final decision has been made, ”Trump said on May 16.
Shortly before the publication of Trump's letter to the head of WHO, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called on world states to join forces in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and provide active support to the World Health Organization.
"It is necessary to help strengthen the role of WHO, to ensure that it makes an important contribution to the fight against the pandemic ... China calls for increased political and financial assistance to this organization," Xi Jinping quoted TASS as saying.
According to WHO, since the start of the epidemic, nearly 4.7 million cases of infection with a new type of coronavirus infection have been recorded in the world. The total number of victims of COVID-19, according to the organization, exceeded 315 thousand people.
- Reuters
- © Brian Snyder
America is the center of the epidemic
The United States remains the country with the highest number of cases of COVID-19. According to WHO, the country has more than 1.477 million infected and almost 89.3 thousand deaths.
According to statistics from the American Johns Hopkins University, in the United States there are more than 1.5 million people who have a new coronavirus infection and more than 90.3 thousand who died from its consequences.
On May 12, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris announced that the center of the epidemic has moved from Europe to North and South America, where the number of infections is growing, while in the Old World the situation is gradually leveling out.
Earlier, Western doctors and analysts expressed the view that, at the peak of the incidence rate, the US health care system has shown an inability to deal effectively with the epidemic.
In particular, an American pediatrician Margaret Flowers, in an interview with RT, noted that the current private health care system in the country actually consolidates social inequality in the country.
“First, there is no universal healthcare system in the United States, and tens of millions of people live without health insurance. Secondly, it turned out that we do not have a centralized healthcare system - American healthcare consists of disparate parts that are poorly coordinated and deeply bureaucratic, ”said Flowers.
The doctor noted that the American authorities did not initially take the threat of COVID-19 seriously enough, and subsequently the country's leadership dragged on testing, with finding out the real number of infected.
The situation with the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes also caused great resonance. In an interview with RT, Thomas Perls, professor of medicine and geriatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, said that the number of COVID-19 victims in nursing homes is not taken into account in the total death toll from the virus. He explained that after taking these data into account, the actual death toll from COVID-19 in the United States could double.
“In the United States, about 1.3 million people live in such centers, and about a third of them are over 85 ... If we talk only about New York, where about 30 thousand people died from COVID-19, then with a more accurate calculation of the dead from coronavirus in nursing homes, the total number of victims will increase to 60 thousand, ”Perls said.
Trump himself announced on the eve of a significant decrease in the number of new cases of coronavirus infection in the United States, with the exception of some states. According to Johns Hopkins University, from May 14 in the United States there has been a certain decrease in the daily increase in patients. So, on May 14, 27.4 thousand new cases of COVID-19 were detected in the country, and on May 18, 21.6 thousand. At the same time, according to WHO, the last minimum of cases (18 thousand) fell on May 14, whereas On May 17, 27 thousand new cases were recorded, and on May 19, 45.2 thousand.
At the same time, the White House reported that after a case of infection with COVID-19 by one of the staff members of the US Presidential Administration, Trump is taking the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, whose effectiveness against a new type of coronavirus has not yet been proven.
“If he does not help, well, he will not harm me. It has been used for 40 years against malaria, from lupus ... I take it for about a week and a half. One tablet every day, ”Trump commented on his decision to take the drug.