Why do Western officials slam the WHO for the pandemic?

Accusations of the West against Beijing and the World Health Organization (WHO), which supposedly made the coronavirus pandemic possible the way it is today are justifiable, but they should target Western WHO experts who were assessing risks in China, expert Sergey Kolesnikov believes.

The West strongly blames China and WHO for pandemic

Emmanuel Macron joined the line of Western leaders, who accuse China of concealing the facts about the coronavirus and its consequences.

"It is naive to assume that China has coped with the coronavirus crisis better than other countries, in which major outbreaks of the infection occurred," the French president told the Financial Times.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump accused the WHO leadership of:

•     praising China's efforts to combat coronavirus and COVID-19,
•     late response to the outbreak of COVID-19,
•     not warning the US of the danger of the disease,
•     concealing facts about the new coronavirus.

Trump suspended the funding of the World Health Organization because the WHO has not fulfilled its primary responsibility and should be held accountable for the pandemic, just like China.

Moscow refrains from accusations

Moscow referred to the communiqué of the G20 summit, which took place at the end of March. It says that the presidents of the G20 pinned their hopes on the future work of the WHO to analyze the experience of the pandemic and support the work of this organization. "It is from this position that we proceed in Moscow," Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin's official spokesman said.

Sergey Kolesnikov, a professor of public policy at the Moscow State University, Doctor of Medical Sciences, said that the WHO has experts from all countries. Earlier, however, the WHO had representatives of five members of the UN Security Council in the ranks, but this condition was lifted, and it is Western and African officials who now dominate the World Health Organization.

The claims against the WHO are essentially objective, the expert continued, as the organization was making controversial that still remain as such, but these accusations should be addressed to  representatives of Western countries, "which dominate the WHO together with their African counterparts, whom the Western countries support," said Sergey Kolesnikov.

Those experts were sent to China, they made their conclusions there, and the WHO was making  decisions based on their findings, he added.

There are serious questions to those WHO experts. They particularly touch upon

•     medicinal drugs
•     promoting the distribution of drugs from certain manufacturers.

The WHO is not a crisis organization

The WHO is not a crisis organization - it operates normally and monitors morbidity rate.

The WHO:

•     outlines the goals that most countries in the world need to achieve in the near future,
•     helps developing, rather than developed countries.

"It is a mission of developed countries to help the countries that have weaker health care systems and higher morbidity rates. Helping such countries as the United States, France, England and Russia is not part of the mission of the WHO," the expert said.

The verbal attacks against the organization, in his opinion, "hide a desire to shift responsibility for the failures that exist in Western countries with the provision of medical care during the pandemic, as well as with the arrangement of medical assistance."

Trump's decision to suspend the funding for the World Health Organization is simply another step that the United States is making to exit all multilateral treaties.

"If we need to reform, let's reform it together, but not at the behest of the United States. The Americans have ruined its own health care - they admit that their health care system is ineffective. Should we obey them in the reform?" Sergey Kolesnikov wonders.