The World Health Organization is fearful that funding cuts announced by the U.S. will deter its efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus in Africa. Aside from coronavirus, the WHO is concerned that vaccine-preventable diseases could also spread as countries are forced to cancel vaccination programs.
President Donald Trump’s decision last week to suspend U.S. funding for the World Health Organization could deter the continent’s ability to stamp out not only the coronavirus but other deadly diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, a senior WHO official told VOA.
The U.S. is the main funder of WHO programs linked to malaria, polio and HIV/AIDS in Africa. Currently, the U.S. has pledged $400 million to the WHO’s $4.8 billion 2020-2021 budget.
While its pledges are mostly locked in for this year, WHO officials expect the U.S. funding suspension to start biting in 2021.
Michel Yao, emergency operations program manager at the WHO’s Regional Office for Africa, spoke to VOA via a messaging app.
“This support is what helps to provide technical support or even to have a technical position in a country. Some of them, a program like malaria, need to have continued support based in a WHO country office. So all these technical positions and also work that is required while convening experts to work on a specific guideline for a given disease, this also the funding was helping, and sometimes even some of the supplies on HIV issues. So, all of this, of course, will suffer if this gap is not covered,” said Yao. Read more…
