Ex-PM David Cameron blasts World Health Organization saying it is ‘riven with politics’ which prevented faster action on Coronavirus and should be replaced with global ‘surveillance organisation’
- The former Tory leader said that the transnational body should be replaced
- Said WHO had ‘many strengths but there is a key weakness in the system’
- It faced criticised for being too soft on China – believed to be source of outbreak
The World Health Organization failed to prevent the spread of coronavirus around the world because it is ‘riven with politics’ that stopped it working effectively, former prime minister David Cameron has claimed.
The former Tory leader said that the transnational body should be replaced by a new global ‘surveillance organisation’ because it relied too much on nations informing it of disease outbreaks.
The WHO has been criticised for being too soft on China – believed to be the source of the outbreak – and US president Donald Trump has said he will withdraw funding.
Addressing the CBI conference, Mr Cameron, who was UK prime minister from 2010 to 2016, said that the WHO had ‘many strengths but there is a key weakness in the system’.
‘That is that when something goes wrong in a country, what we rely on is the country telling the WHO there is a problem and then we rely on the WHO telling all of us that there is a problem,’ he said.
‘In the case of covid, as in the case of Ebola, those links don’t really work. Countries don’t really want to own up to the problem of a virus and the WHO is quite riven with politics and often doesn’t want to immediately get that information out.
The ex-Tory leader said that the transnational body should be replaced by a new global ‘surveillance organisation’ because it relied too much on nations informing it of disease outbreaks
The WHO has been criticised for being too soft on China – believed to be the source of the outbreak. Pictured is chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivering a prerecorded address to the opening ceremony of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai yesterday
‘I think there is the time for some sort of surveillance organisation that links together scientific organisations as a sort of network, using the latest technology.
‘I think that would help spread the information about where the next problem is going to come from so that we are better prepared and more early prepared.
‘The wholesale reform of the WHO would be a lovely thing but I think we’d be waiting a very long time for that to happen. So better to plug the gaps than overhaul the whole of the machinery.’
In September, Boris Johnson announced a 30 per cent increase in its support for the WHO over the next four years, costing £340million and making the UK one of the largest donors in the world.
However, it is understood that part of the funding earmarked for the previous period will be conditional on cracking down on China and the UK is understood to have demanded the body determine where the virus came from.