Prof Karim refutes Trump's claims about World Health Organisation and China

Leading epidemiologist, Prof Salim Abdool Karim said the reasons advanced by United States President Donald Trump for withdrawing the US from the World Health Organisation are unfounded.

This week, after assuming the reins in the White House, Trump moved quickly and withdraw the United States from the WHO, accusing the world body of “mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic,” and the “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.”

Since 2020, Trump has consistently accused the World Health Organisation of aiding China in allegedly covering up the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and allowing its spread.

Speaking to broadcaster Newzroom Afrika, Karim said the rationale behind Trump’s action was not supported by facts.

“It is not correct, and in fact the reasons he has put forward for withdrawing from the WHO were, in his first term as president, he argued that the World Health Organisation was biased towards China and that is simply not true. China, like every other country is a participant in World Health Organisation activities, it has no special status and in fact there are more individuals from the US who participate in WHO activities than China,” said Karim.

“So, his claim that there is some special relationship with China is simply not true.

“In his second term, he now claims that the US has a disproportionate contribution to the World Health Organisation’s budget. He refers to it as the big burden by having to pay this money for the World Health Organisation. That again is simply not true. The US is the country with the largest per capita GDP but it contributes less than a fifth of the World Health Organisation’s budget. Proportionately, it contributes less than it should,” he said.

Karim said there is no question that both reasons advanced by Trump for signing off the US out of the WHO are “not true”.

Karim said the Trump’s gripe with the WHO stems from a period where the international organization was trying to figure out the origins of Covid-19. He said what we are seeing now is the WHO receiving backlash from that period.

Karim added that the issue around the origins of Covid-19 have been politicised.

“This notion that the Chinese institute in Wuhan, or that the Chinese government made this virus and spread it around in its own people in the hope that it would to the rest of the world is simply not true. There is no basis for that. It is just fanciful thinking,” he said.

“What has happened is that in the US, it has become a politically partisan issue. It has become the basis on which the Republican party has chosen to go after certain scientists and there is circumstantial evidence that you can conjure up and claim that that is evidence that the Chinese actually made or spread this virus.”

He stated that it has not been proven that the Covid-19 virus emanated from the Chinese Institute of Virology.

In 2020, IOL reported that Trump dug in on his use of the term "Chinese virus" to describe the novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, late in 2019.

IOL