U.S. President Donald Trump terminates relationship with WHO

New Delhi, May 30 (HS): U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday terminated the country’s relationship with the World Health Organisation (WHO), terming it as the puppet of China, the origin of coronavirus. Trump said that WHO mislead the world over the issue of Corona virus, resulting in deaths of millions of innocent people worldwide.

Eliminating American funding for the world health group, that amounts to $450 million an year, Trump said, “US is terminating the relationship with the World Health Organization over its handling of the coronavirus.”

While speaking from the White House Rose Garden, Trump further said that WHO has failed to make reforms to the organization that the President had demanded in a May 18 letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

He said Chinese officials did not report about the virus to the WHO and pressurized the organization to “mislead the world” when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities.

Coming down heavily over both China and WHO, US President said,  “China has total control over the WHO despite only paying $40 million per year compared to what the United States has been paying to it, which is approximately $450 million a year.”

“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” he said.

Meanwhile the experts says that cutting the U.S. contribution to WHO could have global implications as the organisation is involved in responding to the pandemic, which has hit dozens of countries.

WHO is not the first international body that US has quit after Trump taking charge as President. US had quit the U.N. Human Rights Council, the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, a global accord to tackle climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. The U.S. President has also grumbled about contributions to Trans-Pacific Partnership in January 2017, Paris Accord on climate change (2017), UNESCO (2017), Iran deal (2018) and UNHCR (2018), NATO.

Immediately after the declaration of US withdrawing all support to WHO, a spokesperson of the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “We have consistently called for all states to support WHO.”