WHO risks paralysis due to funding shortage

GBNEWS24 DESK//

The World Health Organization (WHO) is mired in a funding shortage that is already hampering operations, its top emergency expert told health ministers yesterday as countries called for a more in-depth investigation of the pandemic origins.

Mike Ryan, noting the WHO’s appeal in February for $1.96 billion for its pandemic response this year, told the annual assembly: “The funding shortfall of more than 70% when only received funds are considered has left the organisation in real imminent danger of being unable to sustain core functions for urgent priorities.”

“This underfunding and earmarking of funds risks paralysing WHO’s ability to provide rapid and flexible support to countries and is already having consequences for current operations,” he said.

Addressing the World Health Organization’s main annual meeting of member states, representatives from several countries stressed the continued need to solve the mystery of how Covid-19 first began spreading among humans.

“We underscore the importance of a robust comprehensive and expert-led inquiry into the origins of Covid-19,” US representative Jeremy Konyndyk told the World Health Assembly (WHA).

Australia, Japan and Portugal were among other countries to call for more progress on the investigation, while the British representative urged for any probe to be “timely, expert-driven and grounded in robust science”.

A long-delayed report by the team of international experts sent to Wuhan and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions on the origins of the pandemic.

Instead, they ranked a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believed they were.

The report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while it said a theory involving the virus leaking from a laboratory was “extremely unlikely”.