Trump has stopped funding for the WHO. I’d like to be outraged or pleased, but I really don’t know all that much about the organization, what problems they have, how it’s managed, etc. So please enlighten me as to any possible issues, malfeasance, or mismanagement therein. Or is it a well-run and properly managed operation?
I’m not sure there is General Questions answer for this.
I’m almost positive I posted this in IMHO, but got a “timed out” message. Perhaps a mod can move it.
It looks to me like Trump is looking for someone to take the fall for his poor management. When better, than amidst a world health crisis, to extort the WHO, by ending funding, (that they’re counting on to save million of lives in the poorest nations!) unless they take the fall for him.
I don’t think this has anything to do with their performance at all.
Art of the deal, indeed!
The real question is, will it work? Will they buckle, admit ‘mistakes were made’, just to give him an out, and get the funding so desperately needed at this time? I guess we’ll find out.
[Moderating]
Moved.
Assuming this gets moved i will give an opinion.
The importance of the WHO comes with its work in developing world countries who don’t have the sort of medical expertise or facilities that richer countries benefit from. Even if the WHO is overly political and needs an overhaul (and I’m not saying it is) now is not the time to slash its funding. Doing so might be a nice PR stunt for some politician somewhere but lives elsewhere might be lost in large numbers as a result. It would be a crime against humanity in anything but law.
My only experience with the WHO was a couple of field workers in Guatemala who drove a truck around trying to detect water leaks after the 1976 earthquake. Seemed like a worthwhile effort. But I’ve never really heard any derogatory reports about the outfit until just recently, and they seem to emanate from the right. I’m just wondering if there is a strong basis for this or for cutting funding, other than petty revenge.
The general case for The WHO may be different, but in this specific case it has engaged in a series of highly questionable behaviors, and there is good reason to suspect that the current head of the agency is not acting honestly. Many of its public pronouncements seem to be crafted for political effect to favor one specific country, and it has been slow in issuing public alerts, has spread misinformation on several occasions, and otherwise hasn’t really been doing its job in case of Covid-19.
Is everyone assuming that funding will be cut off to the WHO simply because Trump said so?
The WHO led and managed the the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox, and was one of the key partners in the effort to eradicate polio. It has worked on public health management, epidemic prevention, and parasitic and infectious disease management in developing countries that no one else seems to really care about, and while it is far fro a perfect organization it maintains the only efforts at global epidemic disease surveillance.
Trump claiming that he is going to cut funding to the WHO is nothing more than a fit of pique by a malignant narcissist who is projecting his own very evident failings outward. The WHO can be legitimately criticized for not warning of the potential for epidemic sooner (which they should have done once it was apparent that the SARS-CoV-2 virus had spread well beyond Wuhan and was more infectious than previous experience with SARS-CoV(-1)), but even with that failing, Trump sat on his hands and literally dismissed the threat of pandemic for more than a month after the WHO announced an epidemic outbreak.
Stranger
One of the public relations conundrums the WHO suffers from is that it’s tough to prove a negative. People rarely appreciate the effects of its success, only notice when it fails to perform.
No matter how many times they have helped, the populace takes it for granted. When they make a mistake… whoo, boy.
I used to think Tramp didn’t care if we lived or died. Now he shows he wants us dead. Sad.
These are fairly serious allegations. Is there some evidence for them, and would you care to say which “one country” they are trying to favor? If not, why not?
I don’t think we should be taking health advice from aging British rock stars in the first place.
I worked in international development for many years, but never specifically in public health. So take what I say as possibly mildly interesting and relevant, but far from definitive.
There are quite a few multilateral and bilateral organizations working on global development issues - World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, United Nations, World Health Organization, JICA, OED, USAID, GIZ, DFAT, and a lot of others. Not to mention initiatives like the World Economic Forum and so on.
Every institution has a reputation, and that might include such characteristics as evidence-based, political, reliable, erratic, efficient, wasteful, self-serving, fair, and so on. WHO was highly respected, as far as I know. I can in no way offer an expert opinion on their inner workings, but I do know that overall they were considered a trustworthy source of data and ideas for how to develop countries and communities.
Trump is far from the first to have issues with the World Health Organization.
"Perhaps one of the most overt examples of China’s sway over the WHO is its success in blocking Taiwan’s access to the body, a position that could have very real consequences for the Taiwanese people if (corona)virus takes hold there. The WHO’s position regarding China has also renewed a longstanding debate about whether the WHO, founded 72 years ago, is sufficiently independent to allow it to fulfill its purpose…
But while (the delayed response to) Ebola may have highlighted some issues, experts had been sounding the alarm for years. In a 2014 report, former WHO consultant Charles Clift wrote that most observers – including many former insiders – agreed that the organization “is too politicized, too bureaucratic, too dominated by medical staff seeking medical solutions to what are often social and economic problems, too timid in approaching controversial issues, too overstretched and too slow to adapt to change.”
That said, this has to be the worst possible time to try to eliminate funding for an organization that does vital work. Such actions are viewed with glee by special interest groups (for instance, antivaxers) that also do their best to rip the CDC for ulterior motives.
The World Health Organization of the United Nations, which as a body does not recognize the sovereignty of the Republic of Taiwan and has not since it transferred China’s seats to the Peoples Republic of China in 1971. This isn’t a WHO problem; this is a larger geopolitical problem of not recognizing that there are two independent Chinese nations.
As for the complain that the WHO is “too dominated by medical staff seeking medical solutions to what are often social and economic problems,” the reality that the majority of health care problems in the developing world are largely the result of social and economic problems, and can only be resolved in any meaningful way by addressing the underlying inequities, corruption, mismanagement, prejudice, and ignorance that prevents providing people with basic nutrition, clean water, and essential preventative medical services. The idea that the WHO should only focus on natural infectious pathogens and disease while ignoring the environment in which prevention measures are not supported is an anathema to the holistic practice of public health versus just the treatment of ongoing disease.
The other complaints about excessive bureaucracy, timidity in the face of controversy, being overstretched and slow to change, et cetera are probably correct (as they often are for any organization of that size) but that speaks to both a need for expert leadership and a mandate from the member organizations to fully fund and support efforts to streamline programs and make effective change. That is has to—excuse me—kow-tow to the PRC is a consequence that many leading members of the UN have found themselves having to be deferential to China because of the power that nation holds over the global economy, and the US is very far from an exception in that field.
Stranger
Please explain.
The Who is a British rock band that first came to prominence in the 1960s. The WHO is the World Health Organisation.
One of the biggest problems with WHO is that it does not have dedicated funding streams, so its financial resources are unreliable and make long term programming difficult. It is a uniquely American fix to the problem to cut its funding.