Opinion Pieces

Originally published in the People's Defender.

On Tuesday night, President Trump announced that the U.S. is pausing funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) while a review is conducted of the organization's response to the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this month, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multilateral Institutions called for a hearing on whether the WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party cover up information regarding the threat of the Novel Coronavirus. The Committee is absolutely right to do so, as the WHO owes the American people an explanation for its actions and inactions.

With contributions totaling over $400 million a year, the United States taxpayers provide more funding to the WHO than any other country in the world. Established following World War II, the U.N. health organization was designed to promote global health, address disease threats, and provide assistance to the vulnerable. Functionally, it has served as an unbiased clearinghouse for data, analytics, and information-sharing on emerging diseases up until this current coronavirus outbreak. The WHO’s purpose is to ensure that the international community is not left relying solely on incomplete or misleading information put out by self-interested governments during public health crises. If they cannot or will not perform this function with accuracy and integrity, then the United States needs to find more self-sufficient means for monitoring global developments.

Unfortunately, however, this is what most likely occurred with the Communist Chinese regime's attempts to cover up critical data at the outset of the COVID-19 outbreak, while the WHO was apparently unable or unwilling to obtain accurate information about the Novel Coronavirus from China. In January, the WHO reported that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus. Then, the WHO criticized the Trump administration’s important decision to close off travel from China—an action that Dr. Fauci has told us was crucial in our response. This apparent unwillingness of the WHO to criticize the country where the virus originated, while heaping disapproval on the United States, has had very real consequences worldwide.

Detractors have decried the move to review the WHO’s actions as purely political. As a doctor, however, I believe transparency at the WHO is about far more than politics or personalities: it is about accountability, accuracy, and effectiveness. What we are facing globally today is not just a public health crisis, an economic crisis, and a social crisis, but also an information crisis. I served on the Cincinnati Board of Health and witnessed firsthand how reactions to local outbreaks required accurate and honest statistics. In a global pandemic, data from other nations is paramount in the decision-making process for our own nation. That is the expectation of and purpose for the existence of the WHO.

Effectively combatting, curtailing, and containing this virus necessitates truth between nations, international cooperation, and trust in the international organizations responsible for providing the data for critical decision-making, along with a reliance on science and accurate information. Accountability cannot be postponed. Without facts and data, we are going into battle unarmed. Without transparency, we are fighting blind.

Moving forward, China must account for its lack of transparency, and the WHO must acknowledge the role it has played in slowing our understanding of and response to COVID-19 and explain its decision- making. In order to combat this global crises, the international community has a duty to ensure the WHO is fulfilling its role of disseminating accurate, transparent, and unbiased data that can be used to inform the most effective response measures possible.

This fight is far from over. False, misleading data is worse than no data at all. People’s lives depend on accountability.

Dr. Brad Wenstrup, a Republican, represents Ohio's 2nd Congressional District. He is a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.