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The head of the World Health Organization warned President Donald Trump on Wednesday to stop politicizing the coronavirus crisis “if he doesn’t want many more body bags.”
‘At the end of the day, people belong to all political parties. The goal of all political parties should be to save their people, please do not politicize this virus, “said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu at a virtual press conference.
‘If you want to be exploited and you want to have a lot more body bags, then do it. If you don’t want many more body bags, then refrain from politicizing them.
He called for global unity and said that all leaders of all political parties should focus on saving their people.
“Unity is the only option to defeat this virus,” he said.
‘Without unity, we assure you that even any country with a better system will be in trouble and more crisis. That is our message. Unity at the national level, “he said. ‘You don’t need to use COVID to score political points. No need. They have many other ways to demonstrate their worth.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu warned President Donald Trump to stop politicizing the coronavirus crisis ‘if he doesn’t want many more body bags’
President Trump attacked the World Health Organization on Tuesday, also calling it “China-focused” and suggesting that it was hiding information about the coronavirus from the rest of the world.
“The United States and China should unite and fight this dangerous enemy,” said Tedros. ‘They should unite to fight it and the rest of the G-20 should unite to fight it, and the rest of the world should unite and fight it.
“We will have a lot of body bags in front of us if we don’t behave,” he said. ‘When there are cracks in [the] national level and global level, is when the virus is successful.
The organization has become President Trump’s latest target in his blame game, pointing the finger at the devastating effects of the coronavirus, an economic decline, and more than 12,000 American deaths, to all but his administration. Also feeling Trump’s fury have been China, states, governors, and Democrats.
The president called it “China-focused” and complained that it “missed the call” when it came to the coronavirus.
Tedros is an internationally recognized Ethiopian microbiologist and malaria researcher, who is the first non-doctor and the first African to lead the health organization, a position he has held since 2017.
He previously served as Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign affairs minister.
Tedros, who is black, said he is not “concerned with personal attacks” on himself, addressing the death threats and insults he has experienced amid the global pandemic, which has seen 1.4 million cases worldwide with more than 82,000 deaths in 209 countries worldwide. world.
‘I can tell you personal attacks that have been going on for more than two or three months. Abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, blacks or blacks. I am proud to be black, proud to be black, ” he said. ‘I don’t mind being honest … even death threats. I don’t give a damn.
Dr. Deborah Birx said the World Health Organization delayed labeling the coronavirus outbreak as a ‘global pandemic’
Dr. Tony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, declined to get involved in the White House war with WHO.
On Tuesday, President Trump launched a large-scale attack on the agency when it was withholding the millions of dollars that the United States contributed before revoking itself to say there should be an investigation into the group’s response to the pandemic.
Dr. Deborah Birx joined the criticism and said the group delayed labeling the coronavirus outbreak as a “global pandemic.”
Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the administration, appeared to implicate the agency’s ties to China, which has quickly become a conservative topic of conversation, saying the WHO can only respond to the information it receives.
‘You know, the WHO can only react to the data that is provided. And when you go back and look at the timeline, it wasn’t until I think almost in mid-January that China reported that there was person-to-person transmission, ” he said on CBS “This Morning.”
“We really have to investigate the reports and how they were received there. I think it delayed the ability to declare this a global pandemic, an emergency. We can do all of that when we get through it as a global community to really understand how to do better next time. ”
Birx clarified Trump’s comments when he conducted a series of interviews Wednesday morning after the White House endured a chaotic day: a shake-up in the press office, a key watchdog eliminated by the president, and the controversial press conference. from Trump.
“When the president said he had funds, he did not say he was restricting and keeping funds permanently away.” But said instead he said, let’s investigate what happened. Let’s see what happened in our reports. We have done this before with previous outbreaks and previous problems that occurred at WHO, ” Birx said on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’.
But Dr. Tony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, declined to get involved in the White House war with WHO.
“I can’t get involved in that kind of discussion,” he said Wednesday morning on the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom.” “I just need to focus on what my job is, see what we can do in this country and around the world to end this.” The interaction between the WHO is something I really prefer not to get involved in. ‘
At a daily press conference on Tuesday, Trump accused the WHO of mishandling the coronavirus outbreak and said, “We are going to stop the money.”
When asked by journalists whether it was wise to cut funds for WHO during an emergency, the president quickly backed down and said he was only looking for a possible suspension of funds.
But he doubled down on his criticism of the group.
“They rated it wrong, they rated it poorly, they missed the call,” Trump said.
“They should have known and probably knew it,” he added, suggesting that the group was withholding information about the coronavirus.
Trump’s main problem with the United Nations health group is that the leadership there said there was no need to ban travelers coming from China when the coronavirus began to spread beyond Wuhan, where it originated.
The president boasted that his early ban on some Chinese travelers prevented him from being a major threat to the US. USA
Trump has followed the example of prominent conservatives by complaining that the WHO has been too friendly to China during the coronavirus crisis.
Earlier Tuesday, the president attacked the WHO for being “focused on China.”
He wrote on Twitter: ‘The W.H.O. He really blew it. For some reason, largely funded by the United States, but highly focused on China. We will give you a good look.
The World Health Organization has been criticized for not pressuring China to clarify its response and question its numbers on the disease. There is skepticism about the numbers that Beijing reports.
Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, defended the group.
He said: “We are now in an acute phase of the pandemic, now is not the time to cut funds.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric also rejected Trump’s criticism of the WHO and endorsed Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for his “tremendous work”.
‘By the Secretary General [Antonio Guterres] Clearly, WHO, under the leadership of Dr. Tedros, has done a great job at COVID to support countries by sending millions of teams, assisting countries with training, and providing global guidance. The WHO is showing the strength of the international health system, ‘he told reporters.
Dujarric added that the WHO recently did a “tremendous job” putting its staff on the front lines to successfully combat Ebola, an infectious and often deadly disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency on January 30, 43 days before President Trump declared a national emergency in the United States.
The group is part of the United Nations and is based in Geneva, Switzerland, with 150 offices worldwide.
The agency is funded in two ways: through assessed contributions and voluntary contributions.
The assessed contributions, which are like quotas for the organization, are calculated by observing the wealth and population of a country.
In its February budget proposal, the Trump administration asked to reduce the United States’ contribution to WHO to half the previous fiscal year, from $ 122.6 million to $ 57.9 million.
While the USA USA They pay most of the assessed contributions, that total amount of money has only accounted for less than 25 percent of the WHO burden in recent years.
However, American NGOs and charities, along with taxpayer dollars, make up the bulk of WHO’s funds.
Trump said near the start of his report on the virus on Tuesday: “ The WHO, which is the World Health Organization, receives large amounts of money from the United States and we pay for the majority, most of its money. They actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time I did.
‘And they were wrong. They have been wrong about many things.
“And they had a lot of information at the beginning and they didn’t want to, they seemed to be very focused on China,” he said, changing the point he was trying to make in the middle of the sentence.
Later in the briefing, Trump threatened to cut off the WHO’s money supply to the United States.
Trump added: “We are going to suspend the money spent for the WHO.” We are going to put a very strong power into it. And let’s see.
“It’s a great thing when it works, but when they say every shot is wrong, that’s not a good thing.” They are always on the side of China.
Later, when the president was asked if it was a smart move to cut funding for the world’s leading health organization during a global pandemic, he pulled out of his previous threat.
“I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but I’m going to see it,” Trump promised.
The president was later asked why he thought the WHO was “China-focused.”
Trump replied: “I don’t know, they seem to fall on the side of China.”
‘Do not close your borders with China, do not do this, do not report what is really happening, you did not see it, and yet you were there. They didn’t see what was going on in Wuhan … they should have seen it, but they didn’t report it, ” he said.
European director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Hans Kluge, defended the agency after Trump threatened to cut funds. He appears in the photo (above) during a joint press conference on Danish management of the coronavirus last month.
Trump suggested that he could cut US funds. USA That they go to the WHO, and described the agency of the United Nations as “very focused on China”
A WHO tweet in January kicking out Beijing’s misinformation about the virus, which was reluctant to declare a pandemic.
On January 31, the Trump government announced travel restrictions on people coming from China due to the outbreak.
But the WHO said such bans were not necessary, noting that “travel bans to affected areas or denial of entry for passengers coming from affected areas are generally not effective in preventing the importation” of coronavirus cases They can ‘have a significant economic and social impact.’
And the group noted that “restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions.”
“Fortunately, I rejected his advice to keep our borders open to China from the beginning,” Trump tweeted Tuesday.
“Why did they give us such a flawed recommendation?” asked the President.
The WHO also does not recommend that everyone wear a mask, while the Centers for Disease Control made the voluntary recommendation last week.
Trump was following the example of American conservatives, including Florida Senator Rick Scott, who blamed the WHO for “helping Communist China cover up a global pandemic.”
Other Republican lawmakers have raised the theory that the WHO is under China’s spell.
Last week Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus should resign because he “allowed Beijing to use WHO to deceive the global community.”
Like Senator Martha McSally, a Republican from Arizona.
“They need to be clarified and another part of this is that the WHO should stop covering them,” he said of China. “I think Dr. Tedros needs to resign,” McSally said on the Fox Business Network.
‘We need to take some steps to address this problem. It is simply irresponsible, it is unconscionable what they have done here while we have people dying all over the world, ” added McSally.
Scott, the Florida senator, said the Senate National Security Committee needed to start an investigation into the handling of the virus by the WHO.
In late January, Tedros congratulated Chinese President Xi Jinping on the country’s handling of the virus, as the Chinese leader centralized the response after local officials in Wuhan were unable to keep the outbreak under control.
But Xi also controlled the flow of information, with reports coming out of China that the country had been trying to silence the whistleblowers.
At the same time, Democratic governors, lawmakers and experts have condemned Trump’s response in the fight against the virus, suggesting that he did too little, too late.
How the man who runs the World Health Organization ripped apart by Trump as China-centered is a career politician who worked for a communist junta and became the WHO’s first non-medical Director-General after an intense lobbying from Beijing ‘
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a little-known figure before the coronavirus pandemic, has risen to fame as Director-General of the World Health Organization, which is spearheading global responses to the virus.
Dr. Tedros, who has never practiced as a doctor, is a career politician who was born in what is now Eritrea, started working under the communist board of Derg, came to study in the UK, and then reached the top of the Ethiopian government first as Minister of Health and then Minister of Foreign Affairs before being elected to head WHO in 2017.
Now he faces strong criticism for his handling of the pandemic, especially for the praise he gave the Chinese Communist Party for its response: He praised the regime’s “ commitment to transparency ” and said the speed with which it detected the virus it was “ beyond words ”.
That has led to accusations, mostly recently made by Donald Trump, that the WHO is “focused on China,” a position that the President of the United States has promised to “analyze.”
Trump has threatened to suspend US funds. USA To WHO until an investigation has been carried out, while suggesting that they withheld information about the virus.
In fact, it is not the first time that Dr. Tedros has been accused of approaching China. Shortly after his electoral victory in 2017, it was alleged that Chinese diplomats had been heavily involved in lobbying for him.
UN records also show that Chinese contributions to both Ethiopia’s and WHO’s aid budget have increased substantially during the times when he was in top leadership positions.
WHO and its Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus (left, in a meeting with Xi Jinping in January) have faced allegations that the organization is “China-focused” and has been too quick to praise the coronavirus response to the regime.
Dr. Tedros (left) became the first African chief of WHO and the first non-medical doctor to hold the position when he was elected in 2017, amid accusations of strong lobbying by China (pictured, Dr. Tedros in Beijing shortly after his election)
Shortly after his election to the WHO, a report in The Times said: “Chinese diplomats had campaigned strongly for the Ethiopian, using Beijing’s financial clout and opaque aid budget to generate support for him among countries in development”.
Dr. Tedros, who is married with five children, was born in 1965 in Asmara, which was part of Ethiopia at the time, but is now in Eritrea.
As a child, he saw his younger brother die from an infection, which he believes was measles, which he later said encouraged his determination to work in health and health policy.
He graduated from university in Ethiopia in 1986 with a degree in biology and went to work as a health officer in the regime of Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, while the country was governed by the Derg military junta.
According to the BBC, Dr. Tedros joined the extreme left-wing TPLF, which started life as a communist party and played a major role in the overthrow of Mariam in 1991. He later became part of the EPRDF, a coalition of political parties. left that ruled Ethiopia until last year.
Around the same time as Mariam’s expulsion, Dr. Tedros left Ethiopia and arrived in the United Kingdom, where he studied at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he graduated with a Master of Science in Infectious Disease Immunology in 1992. .
He then studied at the University of Nottingham, where he received a doctorate in community health in 2000.
Following this, he returned to Ethiopia, where he joined the health ministry and rose in rank from the regional health minister to the national minister for Heath, a position he assumed in 2005.
During his tenure, which lasted until 2012, he was widely praised for opening thousands of health centers, employing tens of thousands of doctors, reducing rates of HIV / AIDS, measles and malaria, as well as incorporating information technology and the Internet into Internet. Health System.
Before ascending to the top of the WHO, Dr. Tedros studied in the UK and served in Ethiopia’s ruling left-wing coalition as health minister and then as foreign minister (on paper in 2015)
Dr. Tedros was the first WHO chief elected by the member states, he won the ballot by 133 votes in favor and 50, with almost unanimous support from African states.
In November 2012, he was promoted to Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was widely acclaimed for helping to negotiate a boost in UN funding for Ethiopia, including as part of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
In fact, UN funding records show that around this time the country received millions of additional funds, including from China, which had previously given little or nothing to support the country.
In 2015 and 2016, China awarded some $ 16 million to Ethiopia in spending commitments and cash contributions, largely in support of food or refugee programs.
In 2011, just before Dr. Tedros took over the role, and in 2017, just after his departure, China delivered another $ 44 million in pledges and contributions.
His total contributions outside this period, dating back to 2000, were only $ 345,000.
In 2017, Dr. Tedros left the Ethiopian government and applied for the post of WHO Director-General when the term of Dr. Margaret Chan, a Canadian-Chinese physician, ended.
The election was the first to be held under a voting system of all UN member states as part of a secret ballot. Previously, leaders were chosen by closed-door voting by an executive committee.
Ultimately, the field was narrowed to two candidates: Dr. Tedros and British Dr. David Nabarro, a lifelong physician who had helped lead UN responses to past outbreaks, including bird flu, the outbreak of cholera in Haiti and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Dr. Tedros won the ballot by 133 votes in favor and 50 votes, becoming the first African leader of the WHO and the first non-physician to hold office. His victory came in part thanks to 50 of the 54 African states that voted for him.
However, he quickly faced controversy by recommending African dictator Robert Mugabe as the WHO Goodwill Ambassador, amid accusations that he was trying to return favors awarded during the elections.
Dr. Tedros quickly became embroiled in a controversy with the WHO in trying to name African dictator Robert Mugabe (pictured at a conference together in 2017, the year of the appointment), but he eventually bowed to the pressure and dropped it.
There were reports that the move was also intended to reward China, a former defender of Mugabe, for using his influence to get him elected.
The Times added: “China has praised the authoritarian development model of the Ethiopian regime, which rules under emergency powers and has quelled protests in favor of democracy.”
During the 2017 elections, various groups within Ethiopia opposed the appointment of Dr. Tedros due to his ties to the TPLF and allegations that they stifled journalists and cracked down on minorities.
Dr. Tedros was also accused of covering up three cholera outbreaks in 2006, 2008 and 2011 by mistakenly denouncing it as “watery diarrhea”, charges he dismissed as a “smear campaign” by his British rival.
Following his election to the WHO, Dr. Tedros promised to reform the organization with an emphasis on universal health care at his center while increasing funding.
Otros registros de financiación de la ONU muestran que, durante su mandato, las contribuciones evaluadas a la OMS por parte de China también han aumentado significativamente, de aproximadamente $ 23 millones en 2016 a $ 38 millones en 2019.
China también se ha comprometido a financiar otros $ 57 millones en 2020, aunque aún no ha pagado el saldo.
Mientras tanto, la financiación de otras economías mundiales importantes, incluidos los EE. UU., Rusia, Japón y Alemania, se ha mantenido en gran medida plana o incluso cayó durante el mismo período.
Las contribuciones señaladas representan solo alrededor de una cuarta parte del presupuesto de la OMS, el resto proviene de donaciones.
El Dr. Tedros (en la foto con su familia) fue ampliamente elogiado durante su mandato como ministro de salud de Etiopía por ayudar a reducir las tasas de sarampión, malaria y VIH / SIDA, así como por construir miles de centros de salud y contratar a miles de médicos.
MailOnline se contactó con la OMS para obtener comentarios, pero no había recibido respuesta al momento de la publicación. Este sitio también se comunicó con la Universidad de Londres y la Universidad de Nottingham para verificar la información biográfica del Dr. Tedros, pero tampoco recibió una respuesta.
Las recientes críticas a la OMS y al Dr. Tedros se derivan específicamente de su manejo de la pandemia de coronavirus, y en particular de su cercanía percibida con las autoridades en Beijing.
El Dr. Tedros visitó Beijing en enero y habló con el presidente Xi sobre la respuesta del país, volviendo para dar un discurso que elogió la transparencia del régimen, la velocidad de su respuesta y lo atribuyó a salvar vidas tanto en el país como en el extranjero.
Eso a pesar del hecho de que los médicos de Taiwán, que no están representados en la OMS desde que China lo reclama como parte de su país, afirmaron haber expresado su preocupación por la respuesta desde diciembre de 2019.
Los médicos le dijeron al Financial Times que tenían evidencia anecdótica de la transmisión del virus de persona a persona, algo que China negaba en ese momento y un factor clave para convertir la enfermedad en una pandemia mundial.
Afirman que esto se informó a la OMS el 31 de diciembre, pero no se compartió con otros países. La propia China no informó la transmisión de persona a persona hasta casi un mes después, el 20 de enero, cuando la enfermedad comenzó a extenderse por todo el país y en todo el mundo.
Una petición pidiendo la renuncia del Dr. Tedros que comenzó en Taiwán ahora ha superado las 750,000 firmas.
El Director de la OMS es conocido por su enfoque práctico, a menudo visitando personalmente países afectados por brotes de enfermedades, incluida la República Democrática del Congo, que fue afectada por el Ébola en 2018 (en la foto)
China también se ha enfrentado a acusaciones de que intentó silenciar a los médicos, incluido el ahora fallecido Dr. Li Wenliang, quien primero informó sobre la enfermedad y cubrió los primeros casos.
At his Tuesday evening coronavirus briefing, Donald Trump took aim at the WHO, saying the US would consider suspending funding to the organisation until an investigation is carried out.
‘They called it wrong, they missed the call,’ he said, adding: ‘They should have known and they probably did know,’ suggesting the WHO was withholding information about the coronavirus.
‘The WHO, that’s the World Health Organization, receives vast amounts of money from the United States and we pay for a majority, the biggest portion of their money, and they actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time I did it,’ Trump said near the top of the briefing.
‘Y se equivocaron. They’ve been wrong about a lot of things.
‘And they had a lot of information early and they didn’t want to – they seemed to be very China centric,’ he said.
Today Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, defended the organization.
He said: ‘We are now in an acute phase of the pandemic – now is not the time to cut back on funding.’
He also said his administration would look into whether the US would withdraw its $513m funding.
Coronavirus has now infected at least 1.4million worldwide and killed more than 80,000 – though these figures are widely believed to be under-estimates.
