India on Wednesday appeared to echo UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres’s position that now was not the time to freeze funds to the World Health Organization after US President Donald Trump announced a halt on funding the WHO, pending a review of its response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump’s decision to stop funding to the WHO in the midst of the pandemic has drawn wide criticism the world over and is seen as an attempt to deflect attention at home from his failure to respond in time to the outbreak.
The US President has accused the WHO of “severely mismanaging and covering up” the outbreak in China in general and has been smarting over the world body’s criticism of his January 31 ban on travel from China in particular.
“At present, our efforts and attention are fully focused on dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. Once the world has addressed this crisis, we can revisit this question,” sources said when asked about India’s response to Trump’s decision.
Earlier, the UN secretary-general had said: “Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis.... But now is not that time.”
Neither, he added, was this the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the WHO or any other humanitarian organisation in the fight against the virus.
The US is the WHO’s biggest funder, accounting for about 15 per cent of the world body’s budget.