MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. It was counterproductive and irresponsible of Washington to suspend funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) and accuse it of inefficiency in combating the coronavirus pandemic, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
"We consider the United States’ attempts to accuse the WHO of inefficiency and non-transparency and to place the entire responsibility for what is going on in that country on the organization absolutely counterproductive and irresponsible," she said. "It is utterly wrong now to distance oneself from the WHO and accuse it of everything."
According to Zakharova, all the accusations against the WHO of passivity, non-transparency and evil intent are absolutely groundless. "We have already shared the chronology of the WHO’s actions — it is available on the ministry’s website. After receiving primary data, the WHO began to act quite actively, announcing all the steps it was taking," the diplomat said. "At all the pandemic development phases, the WHO was acting under its mandate, in strict compliance with the policies of its member nations, relying on research data."
Zakharova noted that Washington is speaking about the WHO as though it has nothing to do with it, although two WHO director-general’s assistants are Americans. Moreover, the Americans are widely represented in all WHO divisions and expert committees, including the emergency committee.
She also recalled that the WHO’s coordinating role in combating the pandemic is formalized in the United Nations General Assembly consensus-based resolution and the final declaration of the Group of Twenty summit. "The United States actively supported this consensus and we proceed from the fact that it is the official position of the state," Zakharova said.
The Russian diplomat noted that being a member of the WHO executive board the United States could have initiated back in February a special resolution to raise the WHO’s potential to make it more effective in emergency situations. "Obviously, a detailed analysis of the WHO response steps in the coronavirus situation will be needed to decide on how to boost its efficiency. As people say, there is always room for improvement," she added.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 2,190,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 147,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 553,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.