Speaking at the WHO Executive Board meeting, WHO Director General Tan Desai said the world needs a strong WHO, adding that member states have identified one of the biggest obstacles facing the future of WHO as sustainable and predictable fundraising. To that end, he asked the WHO Foundation to raise $1 billion from new sources over the next three years, with 70 to 80 percent of that going to WHO itself and the rest to other public health organizations, with a focus on civil society organizations.
Yet even the independent panel set up by WHO has dismissed the performance of WHO in responding to the outbreak. The independent panel investigating the outbreak preparedness and response submitted a report to the WHO Executive Committee criticizing China and WHO for what could have been more rapid action to avert the epidemic disaster.
The report criticized China’s local and national health authorities for taking stronger preventive and control measures at the beginning of the outbreak last January to prevent the spread of the initial outbreak. The report also questioned WHO’s delay in convening an emergency committee until the third week of January and its failure to declare the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” until Jan. 30.
The panel questioned whether WHO should have used the term “pandemic” earlier to make countries pay more attention to the severity of the outbreak.
At the WHO Executive Committee’s video conference, the U.S. representative said the investigation would only come to fruition if China handed over the information it had, while the Chinese representative countered by calling for an end to political pressure.
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