WHO on the centre stage

The COVID-19 pandemic, with Wuhan in China as its epicenter has wreaked havoc worldwide on a monumental scale. Nations of the world were caught unawares and so was the World Health Organization (WHO). It would seem that this globally active organization has not been able to lead the world in response to the pandemic. While some countries have been trying to fight and contain the spread on their own terms, many countries rely on the WHO for its experience in handling pandemics in the past. The United States of America, and particularly President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of the WHO. We will take a look at how the global organization has handled previous epidemics and whether its criticism is warranted.

- Ayesha Siddiqui

This is, perhaps, the first time since the WHO was established in 1948, that it is tasked with handling an epidemic of such magnitude. The pandemic, first detected in December 2019, still rages on, killing 788,000 and affecting 22.4 million globally, according to the data from Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (as on August 20, 2020).

With an unknown virus, many early assumptions and strategies had failed. There was little success in containing the spread of the virus. The WHO has been criticised for its delayed declaration of a worldwide emergency, ambiguous guidelines about the use of masks and a delay in prohibiting international flights. It also delayed in suggesting that there may be airborne spread of infection in addition to the droplet spread of infection.

While the US government has stopped funding to the organization, most experts in the scientific and medical field are positive about how the organization has handled the crisis.

Votaries of WHO