Gordon Brown has challenged Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to recognise the “deadly urgency” of joining a global push to help poor countries combat Covid-19 and warned the world’s two biggest economies that go-it-alone strategies will end in failure.
The former prime minister – who orchestrated the international response to the global financial crisis of 2008-09 – said Washington and Beijing could not afford to sit out a multilateral effort designed to raise $8bn (£6.4bn) to strengthen the health systems of developing nations.
What is the World Health Organization’s remit?
The World Health Organization (WHO) was founded as the UN global health body in 1948 in the aftermath of the second world war with a mandate to promote global health, protect against infectious disease and to serve the vulnerable.
Its current programme envisages expanding universal healthcare to a billion more people, protecting another billion from health emergencies and providing a further billion people with better health and wellbeing.
What does that involve?
The WHO acts as a clearing house for investigation, data and technical recommendations on emerging disease threats such as the coronavirus and Ebola. It also supports eradication of existing diseases such as malaria and polio and promotes global public health.
While its role on emerging diseases is most familiar in the developed world, its practical involvement is far more marked in the global south, where it has been working to expand basic healthcare, support vaccination and sustain weak and often stressed health systems through its emergencies programmes.
Why is the WHO under fire from Trump?
Trump has presented the freezing of US funding to the WHO as a direct response to what he claims was its slow reaction in raising the alarm over the global threat from the coronavirus and being too “China-centric” in its response. The allegation that the WHO was slow to warn of the risk of human-to-human transmission, and that it failed to cross-examine Chinese transparency early on, is largely not borne out by the evidence. And the organisation’s funding was already in his sights on 7 February, when his administration was suggesting cutting the US contribution by half.
The WHO, to whom the US theoretically contributes roughly 10-15% of its budget as its largest contributor, has been appealing for an extra $1bn to help fight the coronavirus. While the suspension of funding by the US for 60-90 days is relatively small – not least because the US is so far in arrears in its annual payments – the potential for a general US withdrawal from global health funding under the cover of this announcement would be very serious and felt most profoundly in places that need the most support.
“This is an entire generation’s appointment with destiny. No one can be truly safe unless the disease is tackled, wherever it takes hold,” Brown said.
“If we are to stop this in its tracks, our interventions will only be as effective as the weakest link in the global chain. So, if any issue is a candidate for multilateral global action, then it must be our response to this pandemic.”
Brown, Labour prime minister between 2007 and 2010, has helped organise a virtual pledging conference next Monday and persuaded seven major funders – the UK, the EU, France, Germany, Japan, Norway and Saudi Arabia – to take part.
The summit was agreed following a recent letter – signed by 200 economists, health professionals, former presidents and prime ministers – urging far greater global cooperation.
Brown added that the world was on the cusp of a “life or death” moment and it was vital that the US and China supported the plan to pay for vaccines, test kits and treatments in developing countries.
Thirty-four countries in Africa spend less than $200 a head per year on healthcare, and the former prime minister said they needed help to improve their health systems.
Failure to come up with a multilateral response would risk the pandemic taking hold in poorer parts of the world and subsequently being reimported into richer nations.
“The health of each depends on the health of all. Local solutions everywhere are only as good as the global response,” Brown said.
“To that end, we must outlaw the ugly ‘vaccine nationalism’ that seems to be setting in. Restricting new vaccines to those who can afford them will condemn millions to enduring multiple waves of the illness. We must also crack down on medical piracy, whereby, instead of joining a coordinated international effort to increase their global supply, a few countries seek, by whatever means, to monopolise testing kits, ventilators and personal protective equipment.”
So far, poor countries have not been as badly hit by the pandemic as advanced countries, but the United Nations has estimated that Covid-19 could cost between 300,000 and 3 million lives in Africa.
Brown said: “While America and China are offering bilateral aid, they are sitting out the main push for global health coordination.
“Global interventions may feel far removed from the tasks we all face as individuals, families and local communities in getting through this crisis. But if governments do not see beyond their borders and do more to coordinate an international response, we will all suffer.”
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