US withdrawal from WHO a callous political gamble

Having thrown a to-do list at the World Health Organization to commit to "substantive improvements" and giving it a 30-day ultimatum to carry it out, the United States has used the organization's rejection of the unjustified demands as the excuse to make good on the US president's promise to withdraw the country from the global health body.

By trying to characterize the WHO as being "China centric" with its letter demanding changes, the US administration has firmly roped the organization into its blame game targeting China. That this is being done at a time when the world is confronted with such a serious public health threat shows how morally bankrupt the US administration is.

In officially notifying the United Nations on Monday that it is withdrawing from the World Health Organization, the administration is delivering on the vow the US president made in May, when he was scrabbling around looking for scapegoats for his administration's woeful response to the pandemic, and the WHO and China were chosen to be the main deflectors of public anger.

Coming after the US administration had bought up virtually all stocks for the next three months of the anti-viral drug remdesivir which has been shown to have some efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19, the move reinforces the fact that the White House is willing to callously gamble with people's lives to secure votes.

With the presidential election looming ever closer, the White House is desperate to pin the blame on others for the mess in the US, and it knows China is a surefire vote-winning bête noire of some.

Although the US will not be able to quit the global health body immediately, as it has to give at least one year's notification of its intention and clear all its dues, the move is undoubtedly a heavy blow to the WHO and its efforts to coordinate the world's fight against the novel coronavirus.

Although countries such as China, France and Germany have all increased their funding to the WHO, the gap left by the withdrawal of the world's largest economy will be hard to fill.

The US' funding to the WHO is roughly $400 million a year, and that accounts for nearly 17 percent of the organization's expenditure, which has helped the WHO in its efforts to combat smallpox, polio, Ebola, Zika and measles.

Public health experts and politicians around the world have been unanimous in lambasting the US' decision, calling it "senseless", "astounding", "awful", "rogue", and "shortsighted", among other things.

When even the WHO can become a card in the US administration's hand, some of the lives claimed by the virus would be lost as stakes in the administration's iniquitous political gamble.