MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Melinda Gates describes Trump's de-funding of WHO dangerous and nonsensical

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced an extra US$ 150 million to help development of treatments, vaccines and public health measures to tackle COVID-19

Pulling funding from the World Health Organization (WHO) is a dangerous and nonsensical move when the world is facing the health crisis brought by the COVID-19 disease pandemic, Melinda Gates said on Wednesday.

Announcing an extra US$150 million of funding from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help speed the development of treatments, vaccines and public health measures to tackle the new coronavirus outbreak, Melinda Gates said the WHO was “exactly the organization that can deal with this pandemic”.

“De-funding the WHO makes absolutely no sense during a pandemic. We need a global coordinated response,” Gates, who co-chairs the foundation with the billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, said in a telephone interview.

“When you're in a crisis like this, it's all hands on deck.”

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday a halt in US funding to the WHO, saying it had “failed in its basic duty” in allowing the pandemic to take hold.

The Gates Foundation is the second largest donor to the WHO behind the United States. Melinda Gates said earlier that cutting WHO funding in a health crisis was “as dangerous as it sounds”.

The WHO's Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday he regretted Trump's decision. He said the organization was still assessing the impact and would “try to fill any gaps with partners”.

The philanthropic Gates Foundation's new US$150 million commitment brings its COVID-19 funding for the international response to date to US$250 million, but Gates said any gap left in the WHO's funding would be very hard for others to fill.

Alongside support for new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines, the Gates money is primarily aimed at helping poorer countries and vulnerable populations handle the oncoming and spreading pandemic and the poverty it will cause.

“We really as a global community need to address what is now just beginning in African and South Asian countries. We see a huge need, and that's why we have more than doubled our commitment,” she said.

Praising what she described as “heroic work” by local leaders and healthcare workers in poorer countries seeking to protect vulnerable communities and slow the spread of COVID-19, Melinda Gates said the world's response to the pandemic “will not be effective unless it is also equitable”.