WHO falls prey

 COVID-19 is impacting the lives of billions across the world and its impact will continue for months or even a year of two and that also includes the global economy that is surely going to be severely affected. In contrast, China, the culprit which withheld valuable information about the threat from COVID-19 is on course of hijacking the global trade. While the rest of the world are struggling with lockdowns to tame the COVID-19 pandemic, China has taken centre stage as the main supplier of all equipments and medicines to combat the virus. When the virus broke out in September 2019, Chinese authorities kept it secret. Dr Li Wenliang, a doctor who first reported the existence of coronavirus and was initially silenced by China and later, died from the virus. When the virus began spreading, only by January did China reveal a virus with symptoms of pneumonia. However, despite mounting concerns that the virus is spreading unchecked, the World Health Organisation(WHO) chief and microbiologist Dr.Tedros Adhanom refused to declare a pandemic but only as a "public health emergency of international concern". Even after the Chinese finally admitted that the virus was transmitted from human to human, Dr.Tedros, for whatever reasons, still gave the Chinese a clean chit by complimenting it on how it was handling the virus. It was only when the virus began rampaging several parts of China and infections spreading to the other countries did WHO send a team in mid-February to China. After several countries such as the USA, Italy, Spain,UK etc began to experience the aggressive spread, did WHO eventually on March 11,2020 declare it as a pandemic. By then it was too late as the virus had spread across the globe through lakhs of those travelling to and from China. Thus, on this aspect the role of WHO in being too eager to protect the threat from China has led to widespread resentment. Today, China has hidden actual figures of COVID-19 cases and deaths in order to project a picture that it was "COVID-19 free". US president Donald Trump, has minced no words about the role and responsibility of WHO in allowing the virus to spread. When WHO did not sound the alarm as early as January 2020, it led to a false sense of security that the virus was a local problem in Wuhan, China. Eventually, Trump made good on his threat to cut off aid to WHO when on April 15, he declared a halt to US funds. Trump singled out what he called the WHO’s ‘dangerous and costly decision’ to argue against international travel bans to combat the pandemic.While praising his own decision to limit travel to and from China on January 31,2020 – a month after the first cases of the disease were reported – Trump said those nations that followed the WHO guidelines by not banning to and fro travel to China, accelerated the pandemic. The United States is the biggest overall donor to the WHO, contributing more than $400 million in 2019, roughly 15% of its budget."The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable," Trump told a White House news conference on Tuesday. Nearly two million people globally have been infected and more than 1,24,000 have died since the disease emerged in China late last year.The WHO needs to change and heads must roll and the US should continue with its funding in the interest of world health.