The United States has been "running interference" on tackling the coronavirus crisis by fighting with the World Health Organization, David Miliband has warned.
The former British foreign secretary, now head of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said the "striking lack of global leadership", particularly from the US - which has always been at the forefront in past crises - was having a huge impact on the ability of poorer countries to cope with the pandemic.
"The American government is absent from the global response, and its argument with the World Health Organization is running interference on an effective response to the disease," he told the Telegraph.
He said that in much of the developing world where the IRC works, there was a double emergency. "The health and also social and economic emergency is such that these countries need help," he said.
"The people are resilient but they are very poor and there is very weak health infrastructure, and that's the case for a global response."
He called on richer countries to do more. "Obviously a government's first responsibility is to its own citizens, but when you have a disease like this, that is genuinely global, and so virulent, it [needs a] smart head as well as a big heart to solve other problems, and not just your own," he said.
The IRC, which published coronavirus testing figures in countries like Yemen and Nigeria last month showing that dismally low numbers were being reached, continues to prepare for the worst across Africa and Latin America, which is fast becoming the epicentre of the outbreak.
"The fact that Latin America is showing the same epidemiological curve as Europe and North America fills us with a lot of fear. The disease only knows one trajectory," he said.
He said pushing for better testing or other high-cost interventions like "throwing ventilators at the problem" was not necessarily the right approach for more fragile or developing states. Instead, the IRC is using basic fever testing to isolate suspected cases, sending anyone with a fever into quarantine as a preventative measure.
"It's better than nothing," Mr Miliband said, adding that proper isolation facilities, some personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers, and fighting fake news about the virus were arguably the most important things to target.
And describing the UK domestic situation as "very worrying", he said there was another key element in any government's response to Covid-19, one which the UK government had recently put at risk.
"We always say from the most dangerous places in the world where we work, that the most precious asset in a health emergency is not health centres, it's public trust. If you don't have that trust people won't even go to the health centre," he said. "But then I'm just observing from far away."
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