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April 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo said this week the Trump administration may never restore funding to the embattled World Health Organization (WHO) and may instead push for changes or even a new alternative to the international body following its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“It may be the case that the United States can never return to underwriting, having US taxpayer dollars go to the WHO,” Pompeo said in one of two Fox News interviews this week, Reuters reports. He added that the administration would “take a look at” whether it’s time for a different organization to supplant the WHO’s role.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced a temporary suspension of the more than $400 million the United States sends the WHO every year, pending a review of its “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”
Critics have faulted the organization for, among other things, opposing bans on travel from China that could have limited the virus’s reach, and for legitimizing the false claims coming out of the Chinese government, among other offenses.
“In December, the WHO refused to act on or publicize Taiwan’s warning that the new respiratory infection emerging in China could pass from human to human,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote. “In mid January, despite accumulating evidence of patients contracting what we now know as COVID-19 from other people, the organization repeated the CCP’s lie that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. In January the WHO, at Beijing’s behest, also blocked Taiwan from participating in critical meetings to coordinate responses to the coronavirus and even reportedly provided wrong information about the virus’s spread in Taiwan.”
Population Research Institute head and China expert Steve Mosher adds that WHO chief Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus and his senior adviser, Dr. Bruce Aylward, have been “carrying water” for the Chinese regime, from backing claims that the virus didn’t originate in China to praising the regime’s handling of the outbreak.
Further, the global crisis has not been enough to get the WHO to set aside its pro-abortion advocacy, even temporarily, declaring that “women’s choices and rights to sexual reproductive health care should be respected irrespective of [their] COVID-19 status.” Many American medical experts have urged the temporary suspension of all types of non-urgent medical procedures, both to conserve resources and to limit the spread of the virus.
Pompeo made clear that American support for the WHO will ultimately depend on the institution’s trustworthiness to handle such crises in the future.
“If the institution works and functions, the United States will always lead and be part of it,” he said. “When it’s not delivering, when in fact it’s failing to get the outcomes that are desired, we’re going to work with partners around the world to deliver a structure, a form, a governance model, that will actually deliver on the intended purposes.”