"...Under the leadership of Margaret Chan, appointed director-general in 2006, and her successor since 2017, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO has bounced from scandal to scandal. Widely panned for mishandling the swine flu in 2009 and Ebola in 2014, it has also been embroiled in expenses scandals.
Then came the coronavirus.
Tedros, who previously served as Ethiopia's health minister and then foreign minister, was elected to head WHO with Chinese behind-the-scenes support, reflecting China's close relationship with Addis Ababa, which has become China's bridgehead in Africa. WHO has been accused of acting as China's accomplice in initially suppressing information about the coronavirus, with Tedros repeatedly lauding China's 'transparency' when Beijing had hid information about the virus's origins, infectiousness, spread, and deadliness for more than a month. Although WHO's professional staff have faced some criticism for allowing the organization's coronavirus response to be dictated from Beijing (particularly in regard to WHO's exclusion of Taiwan), most of the anti-WHO ire has focused on Tedros himself.
It was Tedros, after all, who on Jan. 11 complemented the director of China's National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei-whom Tedros called 'brother' in a tweet-for 'sharing information [on the genetic sequencing of the coronavirus] in a timely manner,' when in fact Beijing had delayed passing on this lifesaving information for 10 days after Chinese doctors completed the research. When China announced no new cases of the coronavirus between Jan. 5 and Jan. 17-a period when we now know the outbreak in Wuhan was in full swing-WHO took this at face value. Based on the information it received from China, WHO assured the world on Jan. 12 that there was 'no clear evidence of human to human transmission.' In reality, a Chinese doctor had already concluded that the new disease was 'probably infectious' as early as Dec. 27...
U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters aren't alone in thinking that 'the World Health Organization has been curiously insistent on praising China,' as Trump wrote in a May 18 letter to Tedros that threatened to permanently cut U.S. funding and withdraw from the organization. More than 110 countries have now demanded an investigation into WHO's handling of the coronavirus crisis. Time will tell just how impartial and independent that investigation turns out to be. The World Health Assembly's official resolution establishing the investigation, tellingly, does not mention China, which may be why China ultimately agreed to co-sponsor it. The resolution also suggests that the investigation might take advantage of 'existing mechanisms, as appropriate.' Translation: Don't be surprised if WHO ends up evaluating itself. And be even less surprised if that evaluation ultimately pins no blame for the coronavirus pandemic on WHO-or on China."