Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing back against criticism from President Donald Trump that the agency “really blew it” over the coronavirus and the administration may reconsider U.S. funding.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries should stop trying to “exploit” the virus for political ends “if you don’t want to have many more body bags.”

The WHO’s early response to the coronavirus was both perplexing and, for some, utterly in keeping with its own highly-politicized past.

Author Matt Ridley notes the WHO has a series of deadly public health failures and politicized lapses it must answer for:

When the ebola outbreak in West Africa that was to kill 11,000 people began in late 2013, on its own admission WHO hindered the fight against the virus, obsessed with not letting others find out what was happening.

The WHO has spent huge amounts of resources combatting smoking, climate change, obesity and guns

As Ridley writes:

It is an open secret among international diplomats and public health experts that WHO is “not fit for mission” (as one of them put it to me), riddled with politics and bureaucracy. 

When the coronavirus pandemic is contained, the WHO and its leadership should be among those required to answer for their own politically motivated actions…actions that have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths worldwide.

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]